


Well Met

by AtlinMerrick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: All chapters stand alone and complete on their own, All the happy firsts!, First Kiss, First Love, First Meetings, First Time, Firsts firsts firsts, M/M, Sometimes emo, Sometimes sexy, Sometimes sexy emo and emo sexy, Stories of other ways John and Sherlock could have met, Will keep writing these chapter by chapter this is not doooooone!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-18 03:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 43
Words: 38,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/pseuds/AtlinMerrick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no place or time in which John Watson and Sherlock Holmes wouldn't have met. If it hadn't been St. Bart's it would have been somewhere else. But where? And how? Here are some other ways that most legendary of partnerships might have begun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hot Soup

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Italiano available: [Well Met](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9450668) by [Moonflower75](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonflower75/pseuds/Moonflower75)



> Russian translations of [Well Met by Pulp Fiction](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11980146/chapters/27098010).

Sherlock's socks have been wet since before dawn. He's pretty sure he fractured his toe against the pier railing. He's ridiculously cold.

It's all worth it though, because he showed them. Showed them by _showing them._ He went to that crime scene and saw what everyone missed and it doesn't matter it took all day, it doesn't matter no one said thanks, what matters is he showed them _again_ and now maybe they'll call _before_ a scene's so messed up that—

"The mushroom."

Sherlock stops _thinking_ at the hot soups neatly lined up on sandwich shop shelving and looks at the short man beside him. _Doctor. Soldier. Lives alone. Single. Unemployed._

Sherlock's about to do the expected: offer a marginal nod and turn away, when the small man does the unexpected: He plucks up a little round soup container and puts it in Sherlock's trembling hands.

"The far back corner's the warmest."

Sherlock's already pressing the mushroom soup to his belly and doesn't realise it. He's also moving to the far corner, little man forgotten, because suddenly his teeth are clattering and he can't make them stop.

He puts the soup on the table and stares at it because he's trying to remember something he's forgotten. He—

The little man again, holding out plastic cutlery. Why is he doing this?

"Get the wet shoes off as soon as you can, you'll warm up faster."

Sherlock watches the man nod, a quick bob of the head, and turn away awkwardly, his cane in the way of a woman pressing past.

Sherlock counts the small man's steps. One, two, three, nearly gets to four before he realises he wants to say something, something he hasn't heard today, maybe thank—

"How can I tell if I've fractured a toe?"

The limping man with the quiet eyes turns back, already looking down, so familiar with helping strangers, so lost now there are no strangers to help, and he goes carefully to one knee in an over-bright sandwich shop and says, "My name's John. How long ago was the injury? Can I take off the sock? Ah, this is a bit not good. Does it—"

"Ouch!"

It does. It did. And eventually _they_ did.

But first there was soup. A cane loaned. One case. Then two.

Sometimes John wonders what would've happened if he hadn't stopped for coffee that day. If he hadn't seen a stranger trembling. If he'd kept quiet like he told himself to do.

Yes, sometimes John wonders…

 _In[7,094,514,678](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/41789818054/7-094-514-678-four-the-number-of-homicides-last) I said there was no place or time in which John and Sherlock wouldn't have met. The lovely Amity Who asked me to write a for instance—how _ else _might they meet? This is the first in a series of reimaginings. Please let me know what you think, thank you! P.S. Amity's inspiration bore even more fruit![ _The Day They Met_ and also _The Night They Met_](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/138889209609/wait-what-could-these-bebirthday-gift-perhaps). Thank you so much Amity!_


	2. Queer Fish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when Sherlock goes where he never ordinarily goes...

"Fucking queer pansy."

"Shut it, Johnny."

"You shut it. I don't like his type."

"And I don't like your breath, but I'm nice to you just the same."

"That's because I buy your beer."

John Watson's got to stop grinding his teeth. He will. Really. Just not today.

Because his neighbor's correct. John lets Johnny buy his beers because John's flat fucking broke, but if he doesn't get out of that bedsit now and again he's going to open his desk drawer one night and he's—

"I'll go talk to him."

John heads over to the 'queer pansy' in the tight jeans. Eyes made up, spike-heeled boots on his feet, the man emphatically doesn't belong in a dodgy neighborhood pub with dried beer in the corners and walls the colour of bile.

"Hey," he says, because he's not sure what else to say.

The man smiles down at him, all teeth and curls. John's cheeks go hot and already he's lost his train of thought. The ill-tempered thud of Johnny's beer glass focuses him fast.

"Step outside a minute?"

The man's grin turns into a slit-eyed gaze, a hunter sighting prey. They go outdoors, stand amidst a litter of fag ends and ash.

"Uh…I think…"

The man steps close and John realises he's a good half foot taller and smells… Christ, he smells like sex.

"No…look…uh, I think you probably want a different sort of pub. This isn't…"

The moment the man realises John's not interested his interest evaporates. He sits down hard, scowling. "This isn't half as easy as I thought."

John shrugs. "Uh, you're just fishing in the wrong—"

"Yes, lovely metaphor or simile or whatever it is, but _this_ is the milieu in which I must fish. The victims claim—"

"Victims?"

Through the window both men see Johnny bang down his beer glass again, heading toward the door. "Your boyfriend's coming to claim you."

"He's not…" John sighs. Grinds his teeth. Starts walking. After a moment he hears the click of the man's heels going the other way. Once out of sight of the pub John's unsurprised to find the man beside him again.

"So how do you suggest I…fish?"

John laughs. The man—his name is Sherlock—explains. They walk. They talk. John offers tips on pulling in a pub.

A week later a scruffy-looking bloke shows up at John's local. Buys John and Johnny a beer. Talks about his successful fishing holiday.

When the topic turns to a flatshare downtown Johnny's interested immediately, but the scruffy bloke looks at John, a hunter sighting prey. "Step outside a minute?"

John and Sherlock do. They talk. Then they walk away.

Together.

_These are brief reimaginings of other ways the boys of Baker Street might have met. Thank you Jamesgatz1925 for wondering how it would go if Sherlock went somewhere Sherlock never ordinarily goes…_


	3. The Quiet Man

"—since Friday." Mrs. Hudson handed Sherlock his post, placed one remaining item on the hall table. "Mrs. Turner's daughter served with him and when I told her—"

Sherlock was already half-way to 221C, because it just _was not_ possible for another person to have lived in this building _three days_ without him knowing _._

He knocked on that tatty downstairs door in an over-familiar fashion, didn't realise it wasn't even half seven and the tenant—

"—was asleep you know."

Carelessly staring down at the short man squinting up, Sherlock leaned in close and immediately started doing his Sherlock _thing._

"Ex-military, single, doctor but not practicing, you're broke and—"

221C has seen better days. The damp's mildewed walls, ruined carpet, rusted hinges. And yet the small man who couldn't possibly have lived below Sherlock _three days_ closed that door in Sherlock's face without making a single sound.

Lurking and listening for ten long minutes, Sherlock heard nothing. Not a single footfall, not one shifted tea mug.

_Oh, that's interesting. Is that interesting? Why is that interesting?_

Three hours later a nosy consulting detective returned with the new tenant's single piece of post— _Capt. John H. Watson, RAMC—_ and a house-warming gift.

At the over-familiar knock the man inside debated. He didn't want to make friends or lend an ear, he didn't want to engage, he god damn didn't need the _aggravation._

John Watson tugged opened the door—

 _He did it again,_ Sherlock thought, _moved without a sound, made_ other _things silent, is that even possible?_

—and immediately found a pension cheque shoved in one hand, a half-used gallon of green paint in the other, and a big man pushing past.

"It's left-over from a case. You could paint the door with it. So you're a doctor. In fact you're an army doctor. Any good? Because I need an assistant and—"

Not quite twenty-four hours later John Watson was neck-deep in the Thames, dragging under a thug who was holding Sherlock beneath the water. Six weeks after that he was sleeping with his neighbor. Three months after that he moved in with the man who would be his life-long friend. Ten months after that they were engaged.

Turns out John Watson's never really been very good at avoiding aggravation.

_These wee fics imagine how else John and Sherlock might have met if it hadn't been that day at St. Bart's…_


	4. Head Over Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson is not about to meet Huck Finn. He's emphatically _not._

"He was hanging upside down from a tree when he fell? Who am I seeing, Huck Finn?"

"Oh so very much no."

"So what happened?"

"It's a long story, Doctor, uh…"

"John, call me John."

"Well thanks for coming John, usually Mike helps out with…him."

A constable unfastened an old gate fronting a neighborhood garden.

"I'm helping while he's on holiday. Uh, you locked your man _in?"_

Greg Lestrade made embarrassed noises. "Sherlock Holmes isn't my…he's… After he fell he didn't want to stay. Let's just say I've learned to take precautions."

Patient in view, John turned his attentions. "Hello Mr. Holmes, I'm Dr. John Watson. How're you feeling?"

"Fine. I'm _fine."_

John quickly took hold of Mr. I'm Fine's arm. "Well, based off that nice stumble as you bolted to your feet, I'll guess you're a bit not good. Sit please, let me have a quick look."

The full store of his courtesy exhausted, Sherlock Holmes reclaimed his arm and hissed, "And if I don't?"

John Watson went dead still. Sherlock grinned, certain he'd shown the little—

"If you don't _sit_ down Mr. Holmes, I will _take_ you down."

Sherlock's brows lofted high. He stepped close. "Oh really?"

John stepped closer. "A four-year-old old kicked me in the bollocks this morning. I'd love an excuse to vent some pent-up irritation."

Greg Lestrade made a noise.

"You're not very _doctorly."_

"And you're a bit of a dick."

"What an impressive display of invective."

"I'll impress with a lot more than that if you don't _sit_ the fuck down."

Lestrade closed his eyes. If he didn't see what happened next he couldn't be called on as a witness.

When what happened next was nothing, Greg squinted one eye open. Then dropped his jaw.

Bum on the bench, Sherlock Holmes had his hands in his lap and his head tilted up as the small doctor probed and poked.

"I hope you didn't bully the four-year-old so unprofessionally."

"The four-year-old had better manners even _after_ she kicked me."

"In my defense I did fall from a _tree."_

"Which usually knocks sense _into_ people, not _out_ of them."

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard all day, and with this lot that's quite saying something."

"Says the fool who apparently can't hold on to a simple _branch."_

A couple dozen feet distant, Greg Lestrade closed the garden gate quietly.

He looked through old wrought iron at the two men in the distance. Faintly he heard the words idiot, moron, army, and cheese.

"Lock it again," he said to the constable. "Then give me the key."

_This is for LeMisanthrope because the first entry in this series of other ways John and Sherlock could've met made her cry. I promised a (hopefully) funny 'first meeting' and when lovely Drunk on Cookies prompted 'Sherlock hanging upside down' that became this. NEW: The lovely Kizzia[sexily continued the story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1062160/chapters/2129841), go see. Thank you Kizzia!_


	5. Train of Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your hand is on my penis."

"Your hand is on my penis."

John Watson squinched his eyes closed, but this failed to shut his ears. The baritone rumbling to his right _kept rumbling._

"I'm sure the close quarters you enjoyed during your military service left you comfortable with the intimate proximity of men, you might even find it—"

Apologising as he stepped on a woman's foot, begging pardon as he elbowed a man in the ribs, John turned forty-five degrees in the crowded— _absolutely seriously wall-to-wall_ _fucking packed_ —tube car and faced the annoying git whose expensively-clad penis he had, indeed, been unintentionally touching.

Now face-to-face with the over-tall pretty boy, John glared up and growled, "I might even find it _what?"_

Sherlock Holmes both lifted his chin and looked down his nose. He's unused to being sassed by strangers. By 'colleagues,' yes, by his brother, his brother's assistant, the downstairs neighbor, the corner grocer, the dry cleaner, and by his landlord, certainly, but not usually by people unfamiliar with him.

Which is to say Sherlock paused before replying. Which was all the reply the belligerent little man before him required.

"Let's get a few things clear, mister." The stranger rose up on tip-toe so he could drop his voice. "It was the _side_ of my hand that was on your… _you._ And it wasn't there because I wanted it there."

The man huffed in Sherlock's face and for the first time all day—all week—something was not _tedious._ No, suddenly something was very near and warm and smelt of liquorice and righteous indignation. That something was blue-eyed, squirmy tongued, and _listening to him._

" _But,_ assuming you're a bit dim or extremely unobservant, I'll let you in on a secret mister: The tube's crowded today. Do you see? Can you see?"

The train lurched because that's what trains do, and Sherlock let the motion press him against the ill-tempered man with the sweet-smelling mouth, and yes, oh yes Sherlock saw. Saw the little man flush to his hair line at the unexpected press of an expensively-clad _erection,_ saw the man's mouth twitch, saw the man wage a brief war with himself.

And saw which side won.

The small man stood down, literally, but he did not move away. Instead he stood rock-steady still and he kept his gaze locked on Sherlock's sternum and he simply started talking and he didn't stop, didn't stop, didn't stop for _ten_ tube stops.

John Watson went on and on and endlessly on about absolutely nothing—the expense of public transit; the cold; army pensions—because it felt like he hadn't talked to anyone in days, maybe weeks, and now suddenly someone heard him and it didn't matter that the man's interest was physical, it didn't matter John believed himself straight, and it didn't matter that they didn't know each other. What mattered now was that John could see the chest in front of him and John's observant, he is, and so he could see the quick rise and fall of the man's breathing, proof that _he was listening_ and so John kept talking and before he shut up they were in Barking for Christ's sake and the tube had long since emptied but neither of them had moved much, neither had stepped away.

And then suddenly they did, one laughing, the other with a lop-sided smile but they didn't go far, not really.

Wordlessly they sat side-by-side in the now-empty car, ready to make the tedious journey back toward their missed stations and they didn't know it yet, they wouldn't know it for weeks, but from this day forward neither would move far from the other. No, neither would ever go very far away.

From this day until the day they die where there is one, the other will always be.

_Well this went emo rather suddenly. I seem to visualise them meeting cute or being on the edge of ruin when they find one another. Thoughts? P.S. A few folks have asked for these, "What happens next?" Since I don't have time to write those tales maybe you'd care to take any of these stories as a jumping-off point for your own?_


	6. Milk Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was at this point that John realising the painfully obvious: this well-dressed man was not the sex store clerk for which he took him...

"That item is particularly useful for prostate milking."

John Watson inhaled so sharply he snorted his own spit, then choked on it. As he suffocated, he stumbled three steps to the left, away from the big man holding a strand of anal beads.

Apparently proximity wasn't necessary for continued conversation however, for the man added, "Though not all men find prostate stimulation stimulating of course."

John wasn't done asphyxiating so he just kept right on with it while turning away and running into one of those twirly little product carousels. Fully stocked, it tinkled merrily with a festive array of cock rings, nipple clamps, and—surprise!—more anal beads.

The big man in the good coat put his purple strand down and belatedly administered aid by patting John on the back, continuing to elucidate. "For those that do, milking can lead to quite intense orgasms. Which, as a doctor, I'm sure you know."

Through valiant effort John eventually stopped coughing on his own embarrassment. In part this was because he's a battle-hardened veteran—hell he was once so close to extended rifle fire he was deaf for six hours—the other reason John finally got his shit together was because he was so fucking horny that two pats on the back had already left him half hard.

Understand this: John's been discharged from the army for less than seven weeks. He was in hospital and then physical therapy for ten weeks previous. Before that he was busy being deployed to an Afghan hot-spot and getting shot. Add these up and John's not had sex with anything beyond his own hand for over six months. At this point the good Dr. Watson was ready to mislay his heterosexuality and cough up a lung if it meant Mr. Pretty kept patting his back.

Mr. Pretty, however, offered just the two and then began wandering toward the floggers, garters, and handcuffs, so John quickly held up the curvy black item he'd been clutching this whole time and half-shouted, "So you'd suggest this one then?"

Mr. Coat and Curls stopped, turned, looked the sex toy over and shrugged, "My source did report satisfaction."

It was at this point that John narrowed his eyes, belatedly realising the painfully obvious: this well-dressed man was not the sex store clerk for which he took him. John muttered, "Damn."

Sherlock Holmes narrowed his eyes. Of all the things in all the world the soldier could have said just then, that word was the only one which would have intrigued. Because Sherlock belatedly observed the obvious: the soldier was interested in him.

Sherlock smiled, told himself this could be good for his case, that with a little help from a doctor he could more quickly answer questions that had plagued him for weeks.

Despite intensive study, despite interrogating Lestrade—who'd forbidden him to speak of the blackmarket porn case in words of more than one syllable (amazing how constraining such a restriction was on questions of a sexual nature)—Sherlock was no closer to understanding two critical case points. Okay, four points. Maybe six.

"Actually," Sherlock said, his voice a full octave lower than the one he was using three minutes previous, "I was wondering—"

"Wait, how'd you know I'm a doctor?"

They both narrowed their eyes. For a good ten seconds each man was pretty sure this has gone oddly pear-shaped and probably they should just be on their way. Then, of all the words in all the world that Sherlock could say just then, he said the only ones which would have intrigued.

"I need help. Could you spare a minute?"

Turned out John could. Actually the good doctor gave the detective more than just the one. Ended up giving him about twenty-six million or so. Far too much. Enough for a life time.

_Enrapturedreader asked if they might meet in a sex shop. DrunkOnCookies suggested they meet while buying milk. When the pornographic pump is properly primed, what you then naturally think of is prostate milking. Easy peasy._


	7. Freak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Sherlock talks to himself...sometimes the words are not kind.

Sherlock talks to himself often. He answers, too. What you'll hear him say depends on when you eavesdrop.

When he's had a good day there's no one who's a bigger fan. Those days you'll hear Sherlock praise himself for stunning deductions, spotting obscure clues, or for phrases turned just so.

On bad days you'll find he's his own arch-enemy (some people do have them), inclined to vicious invective when he misreads a social cue, overlooks the obvious, or words fail.

"Don't _say_ anything, freak."

Tonight's a danger night. After being shut out of another case—why can't he find the words to make them _understand?_ —he's full of self-recrimination and foul names. So when the woman at the back table pickpockets her date, Sherlock turns away, watches Angelo serve a customer, pretends he doesn't see.

But Sherlock sees.

Sees the woman's heavy makeup as the mask it is, hiding boredom, anger, pity. Sees that the man's a whole strange mess of things: Tired, eager, resigned, worried, in pain. Sees his mended coat, flaking polish on decade-old shoes, hair in want of trimming. He can't afford what she's about to do.

_Don't, you freak, just don't._

When Sherlock means _yes_ somehow he says _doubtful._ When he means _you're welcome_ he mutters _how quaint._ So if he tries telling the man his date's about to excuse herself to the ladies and leave through the back door with his wallet, Sherlock knows somehow he'll say _Good god man, are you blind?_

So instead Sherlock calls himself terrible names and in window glass watches, and when the woman gets up with a smile, Sherlock does, too.

* * *

John knows the date's not going well because she doesn't stop smiling, and he knows it's not going well because she hasn't looked at the menu, and she pushed the little candle away, and because she's been gone awhile.

What John doesn't know is how to stop trying. Because if he doesn't ask the coffee shop barista out, or chat up the woman queuing behind him, or get the number of his psychiatrist's secretary _nothing happens to him._

But it's fine, it's all fine.

John'll keep going on dates he can't afford, and he'll buy rounds at the pub on too many nights, and because John's a betting man he knows it's just a matter of odds: The more he tries, the more chances he takes, the more likely he is to win, right?

_Right?_

"What?" John blinks, looks up at a man suddenly looming. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear—"

"—on the pavement outside," the stranger says, and that's when John notices his own wallet in the man's extended hand.

John stands, but doesn't take the billfold. Instead he frowns up at the man and for long, awkward seconds he knows something's peculiar, knows he's overlooked a vital clue, misread the—

And suddenly John understands that the man is lying. And why. He glances toward the ladies and plops back into the booth with an "Oh shit."

Sherlock frowns, puts the wallet down, steps back…and sits hard in a chair that wasn't there before.

* * *

Angelo Ferlinghetti is skilled at going stealth. Being invisible when he wants to be was of much use when he was house-breaking, but it's of even greater benefit as a restaurateur.

Chairs, candles, complimentary coffees or cake—all of these surreptitiously appear throughout his restaurant, always at a table where two people are on that precipice, the edge of saying something that must be said, doing something that must be done, or on danger nights, on nights when the trying and the failing have taken their toll and it's time for something good to happen, anything, just a little bit of help…

"My name's John," John says, finally pocketing his wallet. "Thank you."

Sherlock leans forward as if to get out of that magically appearing chair and he frowns and blinks and opens his mouth from which a tongue pushes, and he huffs and puffs a couple times and he mutters a thing and then another thing and at this point John's come in close and it takes some effort, some focus and careful listening, but eventually John hears what the man's mumbling soft and careful, as if the language is new and sweet and strange.

"My name is Sherlock," Sherlock says, "And you're welcome."

A few hours later Angelo brings them some nice cake. And a candle.

_The thanks for this goes to the lovely[LateSweetJuliet](../../../868289), who said, "What if they meet when John's on a date," and what I also heard was, "What if the date is full of angst and despair and thievery—but there's a happy ending?" Thank you my dear, thank you._

_In other news, I'm moving to London in six weeks, starting university full time, and will also be working and I'm already breathing into a paper bag. I'll now only publish once a week (Thursdays) instead of twice but won't stop writing fan fiction—I'm stock-piling stories as we speak—but I can't publish as often or probably have time to answer the comments you leave that make my heart soar. I'll be so very grateful if you continue sharing your words in response to mine—and I promise to keep writing John and Sherlock with one hand even as I'm holding that paper bag with the other._


	8. Punch Drunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hey, you! Punch me in the face!"

“You!”

John Watson turned. He was the only one who did.

To be sure, John was as drunk as every other man at that outdoor table, but none of the others had twice served under a doctor constitutionally unable to remember the names of anyone, and so called everyone—

“Hey! You!”

This time John stumbled to his feet, instinctually waiting for bombs or shouts, ready to command or be commanded.

_“Punch me in the face.”_

Woozy with too much whisky John Watson blinked at the tall, slim man wildly gesturing at a big, burly man two pub tables over.

“Hurry you idiot, I haven’t got all day!”

The big, burly ‘idiot’ stood. And did not like being called an idiot. He grabbed the slim man by his coat collar and—

_“Stand down.”_

Some tones of voice halt even those disinclined to obedience. Even when slurred John Watson’s was such a voice.

Drunk-tripping across a minefield of feet and chair legs, John took hold of the burly man’s raised wrist and said, “Let him go.”

The burly man blinked. He released the slim man. The slim man started to say something strident. John belched and began to say you’re welcome. The burly man punched John in the face.

Years later, when John tells this story at parties, he insists he regained consciousness _already running down an alley_ alongside Sherlock. He further insists Sherlock had no reticence at shoving him—and his bleeding face—in front of the doorman to get them into the tenants-only building.

What _Sherlock_ then goes on to say because Sherlock has no reticence at all about anything ever is that John was so excited after their dangerous little escapade concluded twenty-six hours later he clapped both hands over Sherlock’s ripe behind, snogged him senseless, and _then_ finally asked his name.

Sherlock smugly concludes that he enthusiastically gave it to the good doctor—and his name, too—soon after.

_Another silly meeting, with a hint of angst (John’s drinking in several of these, did you notice?). Thank you DrunkOnCookies who said, “Sherlock’s looking for someone to punch him in the face.”_


	9. Stop. Over.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man doesn't know he's banging his head against the window, John's sure of that. John's less sure of himself as he comes alongside the stranger and says in what he hopes is a pleasant voice, "Bad day?"

_Stop, stop, stop._

John Watson says it softly, a mantra muttered through pressed-thin lips, but it does not stop the pain.

Clutching his jeans with sweaty hands, sitting alone at the airport gate and seven hours early for a flight that'll finally take him back to England, John rocks in his plastic chair and whispers _stop, stop, stop._ But there's only one thing that'll stop the fire in his shoulder, and it sounds just like an Afghan viper when he turns the bottle slowly in his hands, the pills whispering with that snake’s soft _shhhh._

John tugs the oxycodone from his pocket and though he's not due for another pill for six hours he thinks maybe he could break one in half, maybe he could just—

"No," he says to no one. Splitting the controlled-release pill will just rush the drug into his system. He's seen soldiers get addicted that way, quick as…as…

…as John rolls the bottle round in his sweating hands, he stops saying _stop_ and he listens closely to the soft, soft _shhhh_ of the pills.

*

_Over._

Sherlock Holmes stands at a dusty window and stares out at tarmac, grass, and aeroplanes all faded in the Kabul sun.

Another case over before it began. Another missed chance to prove what he could do. Another failure to put words to invisible facts, to make people understand, to show them what he sees.

_Over._

Sherlock is over this. He's tired of the _heat_ of words and images bunched up in his head, fire trapped behind a door. He's tired of opening the door and watching everything _burn._ He doesn't know how to do this right, he doesn't know how to use the fire to make light, he desperately wants to illuminate, instead he turns everything to ash.

And he's over it.

Sherlock slides a hand in his pocket and wraps long fingers around a bottle of oxycodone he stole from the embassy. All he has to do is _do it._ Put the lot in his mouth and let them prick his jaw bitter and he'd be _done_ doing. Done trying. It'd be over.

Sherlock closes his eyes, bows his head to the dusty airport window and he turns the bottle round and round in his pocket until it makes a sweet, soft little _shhhh._

*

The man doesn't know he's banging his head against the window, John's sure of that. John's less sure of himself as he comes alongside the stranger and says in what he hopes is a pleasant voice, "Bad day?"

Sherlock stops. Turns. Sees. _Soldier. Wounded. Alone._

_Distraction._

"I have," Sherlock says softly, "not often had worse."

*

Over the next seven hours John buys them both coffees. Then colas. Then teas.

Sherlock buys them sandwiches which contain a filling neither can identify but it tastes of fish and smells like pineapple.

John asks if World Cup preparations have bunged up everything in London, if the Lance is done yet, if city hall is still ugly.

Sherlock asks about Afghan food, John's shoulder, how long a blood transfusion takes, if it's true tongue prints are unique as fingerprints, and when human bones cease fusing.

When John asks why Sherlock's asking they spend part of those seven hours talking about the cases Sherlock's had (well, almost—but he leaves that part out), the deductions he's made, the experiments he's done.

By the time they're ready to board John's nearly one hour past his next pain pill and Sherlock's dumped his down an airport loo.

They have a three hour stop over in Jerusalem, then another in Istanbul before arriving in London—Sherlock lies twice so that they're seated together, once claiming they're married—and by that time they have talked without pause for twenty-two hours.

When they arrive in London neither is met at the airport, and for approximately ten seconds both are sure this is over.

They begin walking in separate directions, but within two strides both stop. Turn.

And both start over.

Sherlock winks. John smiles. They leave the airport together. They talk on the tube all the way into the city.

_Mithen mentioned about reading this series during a seven hour airport stop-over, and suddenly it seemed exactly right that John and Sherlock might meet while traveling. Thank you Mithen._


	10. Skull and Cross (Saw) Bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock will deduce you before he's met you, he'll deduce you after three words, he'll damn well deduce you from the teeth marks you leave in your toast.

_Angry. Short. Dreadfully dull._

Sherlock Holmes will deduce anyone, any time. He'll deduce you before he's met you, he'll deduce you after three words, he'll damn well deduce you from the teeth marks you leave in your toast.

Which is why Sherlock was sanguine about deducing Dr. John Watson despite their acquaintance consisting of four grumpy phone conversations.

Sherlock knew Watson's type: Brave when hiding behind a title, a rule, a telephone, but get full-face in front of them and they'd always wilt.

"—and I _said_ you could work for the fucking pope but I'm still not giving you the god damn skull."

Standing in front of his messy desk the angry doctor—Sherlock had totally been right about _that_ —scowled. Ordinarily John was perfectly content working graveyard shift in St. Mary's morgue. Despite being wildly over-qualified, despite spending most long nights alone with a tiny TV and his own moods, John often sometimes somewhat almost actually _liked_ his job.

Except when the loonies rang up. Or loony, because he just had one, a deep-voiced git who wanted pints of blood, or eyes, or left thumbs for Christ's sake.

This time he'd shown up at the morgue in person, demanding John's skull. Well not John's _actual_ skull, but the one on his desk.

"Detective inspector Lestrade said I could _have_ it."

The short doctor—Sherlock had _totally_ been right about that—seemed to grow six inches. "Listen, you over-pretty little shit, the DI has no claim on that skull and no right to give it to anyone and I'm betting he never even said that and even if he did you're not getting it. She's mine, she's been mine for a long time now, and you'll have to pry her from my cold, dead hands before you have her."

Sherlock was given pause. Over the years many sobriquets have been applied to him. He's been called a dick, a prick, an annoying bastard, an arrogant shit and, most memorably, a freaky little fuck. However, until today no epithet has included the word _pretty._

Sherlock smiled. And, even though John had just met the man, the good doctor was absolutely certain that the smile was real and that it was rare. Suddenly John felt sorry for the awkward idiot.

Which was why he said, "You can borrow her. For a little bit. A few days. Maybe a week. _Borrow._ As in bring her back. Here. You have to bring her back. To me. Okay?"

Sherlock's grin grew.

"But first you have to say please."

This time Sherlock was not given pause. Because Sherlock will do anything for a thing he wants and he long ago ceased being on speaking terms with embarrassment, shame, or self-consciousness. So the good detective clasped his hands behind his back, he bowed at the waist, and he inclined his shaggy head and he said soft and sweet and low, "Please, Dr. Watson?"

For his part Dr. Watson would spend the next six days, three hours, and twenty minutes—John didn't count, he just happened to, uh, know—thinking about the pretty bowing fool with the fluffy hair and the big coat. While he was thinking about him he'd think about things he'd been meaning to think through for awhile now, things about himself he wasn't sure about. Things he was pretty sure he was now pretty sure about. By the time Sherlock came back with the skull six days, three hours, and twenty minutes later John was sure and John was ready.

For his part Sherlock took his time coming back not because he needed the skull for as long as all that but because he'd deduced a whole lot of things about the short, angry doctor in their unusual acquaintance and he knew the doctor needed time to deduce those things about himself.

So when Sherlock did come back he was pleased to see he'd correctly deduced that John had deduced the things he'd needed to deduce. Though right then and for a good couple years after Sherlock _was_ irked he'd got one bit of his original deduction wrong: Dull was the last thing John Watson was. The very last.

It's always something.

_At last, a wee, slightly-skull-based story for Mid0nz, who is so very patient. P.S. If you like "Well Met," there are 47 new stories of how they met in mah first book, "[The Day They Met](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is)." Thank you!_


	11. ...He's My Brother

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> London is no battlefield but when John Watson sees one man in a fireman's carry over another's gore-red shoulder his response is immediate: Stop the bleeding.

"Stay with me My."

His umbrella contains a concealed sword, his Italian shoes are steel-toed, and he knows three martial arts, including one of which no one's ever heard. Even so, some god-forsaken little terrorist got to him just a few dozen feet from the Diogenes.

"Please Mycroft, please."

They've played the game since they were children and let's be honest, they'll never be grown men, not with each other. So the game is ever on, the one where a bored Sherlock follows a busy Mycroft, trailing him from one dull embassy to another, from Downing Street, to the Diogenes, to Scotland Yard (the only place of _interest)._

The game has no set hours because Mycroft keeps to no clock. While London sleeps, Sydney, Shanghai, and New York scheme and then too does Mycroft. So it isn't odd for Sherlock to again pick up his brother's trail as he glides down the Duke of York Memorial steps near midnight, and it isn't odd for Mycroft to see Sherlock's shadow shifting near those wide and lonesome stairs.

What _is_ odd to both is an unrecognised laugh and then the speed at which a shadow becomes a stranger with a grudge and a knife. Between the two Holmeses the assassination attempt is over before it begins.

Except not quite.

"Nearly there."

Trafalgar Square's less than a quarter mile from the memorial steps—closer than any hospital or ambulance. Never quiet, the great square rumbles ever with taxis, tourists, night buses.

"Be still My, I've got you."

London is no battlefield but when John Watson sees one man in a fireman's carry over another's gore-red shoulder his response is immediate: Stop the bleeding.

They don't say a word, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Instead Dr. Watson puts pressure on the single stab wound and the artery above it, while Sherlock calls for an ambulance, his hand never leaving his wounded brother's face.

* * *

In the morning John says little while Mycroft says even less but with far too many awkward words. In his rarified occupation the elder Holmes is used to expressing a certain stiff-backed gratitude, but so rarely for himself. How do you thank a man for your life?

"Shut up Mycroft."

At Sherlock's arrival beside his brother's hospital bed, John smiles. Escape at last.

John's about to utter his first and last words to Sherlock— _it was nice to meet you_ is probably not what he's going to say—but he never does find out because Sherlock talks for him. And for his brother. And probably for god and his twelve apostles, who the hell knows?

"You saved his boring life and so what my brother's so verbosely trying to say is _thank you._ What you no doubt will reply is _it's nothing,_ or _that's my job,_ or something similarly self-effacing and dull but what you'll mean is _you're welcome,_ though what you _should_ say is _I certainly did and you damn well owe me._ Yes? Good. Now what I say is…would you like to have coffee?"

From the man's averted gaze and the speed at which he rapid-fired his monologue, John's pretty sure Sherlock just asked him out.

Saying _I'm not gay_ would be presumptuous, saying _no thank you_ seems rude. John's not sure what he's about to say when he glances at Mycroft Holmes but when he does, John knows. Because Mycroft's eyes are pleading now in a way they weren't last night.

 _Please,_ the bed-bound man says without saying it, _please say yes._

John doesn't know their story, he doesn't know why the brothers show their obvious love for one another with bickering and eye rolling, but John's a healer, right down to his bones. If this is what his patient—well, ex-patient—needs, then John doesn't see what harm saying yes can do.

It's just one coffee. What on earth can happen over one coffee?

_Kitmerlot1213 wanted Mycroft to be the reason John and Sherlock meet. Since I think Mycroft's job can be dangerous, I also think that might catch up with him one day. And yes, I gave the elder Holmes all the defensive skills ACD says the younger Holmes possesses. Where do you think Sherlock learned them, after all?_


	12. Come From Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock put on his scarf and coat and he opened the door. That his trousers were still pooled at his ankles was beside the point...

Sherlock Holmes doesn't jerk off.

His devotion to not laying hands on himself started soon after he began laying hands on himself. He was fourteen.

Though he knew what wet dreams, masturbation, and orgasms were, Sherlock had been convinced he was above them. Then he woke from the first because he was doing the second which led to the third.

This was not one little bit of all right, and so, before his fifteenth birthday, he'd (mostly) stopped doing the second, which helped him gain control of the first, and so cease coping with the third.

This became relevant twenty-one years later as Sherlock Holmes stood in the sterile confines of a sperm bank wanking room. (They have not called the room that. They have not called it anything except busy. "It's busy," the receptionist said, "because of the remodel. Hurry on.")

An amendment to Grand-mère Holmes' will—something to do with unmarried males reaching thirty-five without progeny blah blah must bank their genes blah blah assets withdrawn if failure to comply blah blah—has lead to Sherlock being where he is, about to do something he has no wish to do.

And that thing is jerk off into a small vessel, so that the result can be frozen against the day there is not a sufficiency of Holmeses (being as some believe the two currently residing in London are twice more than enough, this problem seems somewhat manufactured).

Be that as it may, all Sherlock knows is that if he wants to continue not caring about something as dishwater dull as _finance,_ he must get something sperm-like into this cup. And there's the…rub. Due to long years of abstinence and despite quite a bit of effort, Sherlock finds himself devoid of a certain critical necessity: An erection.

* * *

"Helloooo?"

Sherlock ignores the receptionist's sharp knock and trilling call, just as he's ignored her for the last thirty minutes.

Instead he looks down at his still-limp cock and he—

Another tap at the door, this one gentler, followed by a man's voice.

"Sir, may I?"

Sherlock clenches his jaw. He contemplates opening the door with his fist wrapped around his prick. He does not do this. Instead he puts on his scarf and his coat and he opens the door. That his trousers are still pooled at his ankles registers instantly to the short doctor standing there. The man steps inside quietly—

Sherlock's brain rat-tat-tats: _Locum. Ex-army. Sympathetic. Smells ridiculously good._

—then turns his back politely.

"Um, I'm Dr. Watson and I'm stupidly sorry about this," the small man begins. "I know these interruptions are a bit not good but…uh, as we may have explained poorly, all our donation suites, except this one, are being repainted."

John Watson pauses briefly when he hears…a sound.

"I, uh, don't understand why they did them all at once either, but I do understand that it's lead to a bit of a traffic jam for the one room left and I'm sorry, but we've had to institute a time limit for—"

John becomes aware that the man behind him is…he's…wanking _to_ him. To his voice. Instantly John's voice drops half an octave of its own accord. Sherlock doesn't bother to mute his moan.

Which causes John's voice to go suddenly husky, which leads to another fucking _fantastic_ moan. By this point John's so completely visualising what's going on behind him that some fast-beating, butterfly-winged bit of him is giddy, flattered, and suddenly empathetically horny. He's thinking a whole range of sexy things and he's about to maybe say something when there's a knock on the door and—

"God damn it Adele, we're busy in here!"

—and the man behind John groans high and long in relief.

* * *

The text comes as John arrives at work two days later.

_Let's have dinner._

John frowns. He doesn't recognise the number. He deletes the message.

Another text the next day.

_You look sexy in your lab coat. Let's have dinner._

John frowns-grins. Still doesn't know the number. Deletes.

_I don't usually masturbate in front of a man without formal introductions. Let's have dinner._

John grins and wonders how the big git got his number. He shoves his mobile in his pocket, pretends he's not going to reply. At half six he does.

_Angelo's. Near Baker Street. In an hour?_

The reply is immediate.

_I'm already here. Come at once, if convenient._

John giggles to himself, "Well, I suppose it _is_ my turn."

_A conversation with the wonderful[Chocolamousse](../../../users/Chocolamousse/pseuds/Chocolamousse) included discussion of sperm donations. Naturally that seemed an excellent way for John and Sherlock to meet. Thank you Chocola!_


	13. Cupid's Bow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John nodded to a few of Scotland Yard's finest—the train conductor, the cat, the Boris Johnson—went to his knees beside the mostly-naked corpse…and that's when it started.

"I don't _need_ an assistant."

When frustrated, Greg Lestrade doesn't vent his spleen, clench fists, or grind teeth. He doesn't roll his eyes or make a moue.

You'd think five years of working with Sherlock Holmes would have given him all these tics and more, but mostly Lestrade just shrugs, tucks his chin a bit, and tells everyone that Sherlock's the reason he's gone completely grey.

"We've been over this, Sherlock, You're not even supposed to _be_ here."

Pacing round the costumed corpse stretched belly down on the pavement Sherlock rolled his eyes.

Lestrade tucked his chin and said, "If we can follow protocol just a bit, then—"

Sherlock ground his teeth. "—then him. I pick him."

Greg turned. "The bloke in the white coat? That's Chris's ex." Momentary rumination. "They stayed friends though, which is really kind of ni—"

"Yes, fine, he could be sweetheart to the regiment for all I care. He's a doctor, he can assist me."

Lestrade's used to Sherlock appropriating things. His warrant card. His mobile. His car. These are some of the many things over which Lestrade doesn't clench, grind, or roll, but he thinks he ought to draw the line at Sherlock appropriating people. "Sherlock, you can't just appropri—"

Too late.

Oblivious to the approaching storm, John Watson continued chatting up the vampire. When she was busy, he let the werewolf chat _him_ up. He was pretty sure they—

A dark-haired giant got right up in his face and said with insinuating urgency, "Follow me doctor, there may be time to save him."

Before John could ask who or where the man swooped away and, for the very first time but not the last, Dr. Watson ran after Mr. Holmes.

* * *

"He's _dead."_

"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper."

"You said there'd be time to—"

Sherlock Holmes stepped over the sheet-swaddled corpse, got right on up in his appropriated stranger's face. "All I need are your thoughts on cause of death, _doctor._ Shouldn't take long. You'll have time to chat up constable Singh after."

John Watson did not say anything, not one thing. His jaw, however, was quite eloquent.

Sherlock made a moue and took a step back.

John chuffed out a breath, nodded to a few of Scotland Yard's finest—the train conductor, the cat, the Boris Johnson—went to his knees beside the mostly-naked corpse. Long moments later he said, "If you're thinking it's the arrow, it's almost certainly not. A flesh wound, through the fatty part of his waist. Probably fell on it when he died."

"Obviously," groused Sherlock.

John ignored the interruption. "Looks healthy despite his weight—"

"I don't need to know his—"

"—well hello there."

Sherlock shut up with a grunt, went to his knees beside the doctor. "What?"

Both men leaned over the plump corpse and peered. "See the slight swelling around that puncture by his wing? Easy to miss but it looks like a bee sting. May have been allergic."

"I _knew_ it."

"No you didn't."

"I was ninety percent certain."

"No you weren't."

"You don't even know—"

"—you? I know your type."

Scotland Yard's costumed finest began to talk amongst themselves.

"My type?"

"I was in the—"

"—army, yes, I—"

"—know domineering and attention-seeking when I'm standing—"

"—kneeling—"

"—next to it."

Sherlock pursed his lips petulantly. John pursed right on back. The Yard's finest murmured about the Halloween parties they were missing.

"Attention-seeking? I'm not the one wearing an _I'm a doctor, date me_ neon sign."

John tugged his thin white lab coat tighter, adjusted the stethoscope at his neck. "It's a _costume_ for a _party_ and that's rich coming from a flappy-coated git in a funny hat. What kind of get up is _that_ supposed to be?"

Sherlock did not mention the deerstalker had been a gag gift from several of the assembled officers. Instead he channeled his inner dick—no real costume for that—and said, "Constable Singh, the vampire? She's married I'm afraid, to the werewolf actually. But constable Ketty, the cowboy? I hear he's quite free. _Quite_ free."

John growled up at the idiot making _another_ moue down at him. "First, you think you're a regular Miss Marple, don't you? Second, you had no clue about the bee sting, I know you didn't. And third, I'm not actually gay. What a great detective _you_ make."

Sherlock licked his lips for the eighth—no, there he went again—ninth time, then pursed the elaborate bow of them. "Oh that's amusing coming from a man who can't—"

Before he could hear the completion of that thought, Greg Lestrade dipped his chin a bit, mumbled something to no one in particular, then wandered off. Because while it's true the DI does not do this, that, or the other thing when vexed, Greg does do something pretty well, despite what Sherlock says: He observes.

And right now, walking away from the body of a wing-wearing man sprawled face-first on the cobblestones, an unfortunately-dead individual in swaddling-cloth, strappy sandals, clutching golden arrows in one hand, and a half-empty quiver in the other, Greg was pretty sure of one thing.

Cupid's bow had found its mark.

 _When you're completely uncertain if you managed to get the point across, underscore the point: The Cupid's bow of which I speak is not only the Cupid-costumed man's accoutrement, but Sherlock's_ mouth, _which he licks and bites and_ moues _at John repeatedly. There. I'm done being unsubtle. For now._


	14. Grave Matters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock doesn't care that it's Remembrance Day. And he doesn't care the mud's wrecked his expensive shoes. What Sherlock does care about is the short man standing at 'his' grave...

Sherlock Holmes doesn't have friends. Not one.

Well, not _living_ anyway.

And maybe the young constable was never a friend, maybe she never saw him that way. Maybe he doesn't think of _her_ that way either, Sherlock's not sure. Because he doesn't know how you define friend really.

Is a friend someone who nods when passing you in the shops? Do friends pick up your post when you're away? Do they notice you skirting crime scene after crime scene and one day tilt their head in your direction until a distracted detective inspector looks up, looks over, then finally _comes_ over?

Sherlock's not sure. He is sure of one obvious thing: constable Willa Tyler helped him when she had no reason to help him, and she changed his life in the doing of it.

He may not have a living one, but Sherlock thinks that probably qualifies the young woman as a friend, though they spoke just one time when she was alive.

Which is why Sherlock sometimes comes to Abney Park cemetery, slow-wanders its muddy paths, stops in front of an old monument—one made new with the addition of the young woman's ashes—and he shows his gratitude to her with a moment's pause and a silent _thank you._

* * *

John hates Remembrance Day. He's aware that as ex-military this is much like the pope confessing a distaste for Christianity, but you put army soldier _and_ surgical doctor on your CV and see how fond you are of dwelling on the too-many lives lost during your watch.

Yet John Watson's many things, and one of them is dutiful. Which is why, on this long autumn day every November, the captain and doctor does his duty: He visits a London cemetery—never the same one; it would be impossible to know the resting place of each of those he served with, cared for, or simply once knew—and John puts a poppy wreath on the saddest grave.

Though the grave before which he now stands is not sad in the conventional sense. It's well-cared for and beautiful, a fine monument to William Tyler, a man who, like John, did his duty and, like John, was shot in the doing of it.

No, this grave is sad because the ashes of the man's descendent are now interred with him. Named after her ancestor, Willa Tyler not only followed William into the police service but she, like he, died young and in the line of duty.

So this year John places his wreath on one headstone and for two people.

* * *

Sherlock doesn't care that it's Remembrance Day. And he doesn't care that the mud's wrecked his expensive shoes. What Sherlock does care about is the short man standing at 'his' grave. Strangely annoyed, affronted, he's about to turn away when the man sees him and says gently, "She was so young. Was she your friend?"

Of course Sherlock can read the man's story in his posture, his haircut, his coat, which is why his apparent sentiment is surprising. Intrigued Sherlock doesn't turn away, instead he steps near and asks, "What's a friend?"

The funny thing is, John doesn't find the question funny. He should, it's an odd question. But John's not laughing, he's thinking about his answer and he takes his time.

Finally he says, "Friends…help one another. They have faith in each other, protect each other. If they're good friends, they change everything."

After a moment's silence Sherlock nods. "Then yes."

John nods, too. "I'm sorry."

To this Sherlock says nothing.

It's not until the next Remembrance Day when, hand-in-hand, he and John return with two poppy wreaths, that Sherlock stands at a brave woman's grave and finally says softly, but quite clear, "Thank you, my friend."

_RoseGlass thought since series two ends in a cemetery, a "The Day They Met," should begin in one, then my husband gave me the perfect title. Thank you both. By the way constable Willa Tyler is fiction, but constable[William Tyler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Outrage) was real and he did sacrifice his life in the line of duty. His [beautiful monument](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/66678144591/grave-matters-sherlock-holmes-doesnt-have) can be found in Abney Park, north London. Britain's [Remembrance Day](http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/events/remembranceday) is 11 November._


	15. Vajazzle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Oh god I must really love you to have said yes to this."
> 
> John Watson's girlfriend sat up quickly. The long-fingered man depilating John's privates went still. And John Watson quickly realised he had said way the fuck too much.

"John, are you crying?"

John Watson could not be reached for comment because John Watson might possibly be crying.

Head bowed, shoulders shaking, silent but for the gentlest sobbing, he made every effort to respond, but due to the profoundly unfamiliar thing happening between his legs, he was simply incapable.

"Does it hurt? Where does it hurt? It's not supposed to hurt. When I booked this spa day I absolutely asked them if it would—"

John drew a deep, gasping breath, lifted his head, and on a hysterical keening exhale said, "Oh god I must really love you to have said yes to this."

John Watson's girlfriend sat up so quickly her logo-emblasoned turban listed left. The long-fingered man meticulously depilating John's privates went still. And John Watson quickly realised he had said _way_ the fuck too much.

To completely compound his error, the good doctor made an earnest face at his girlfriend. She made some sort of face back but he couldn't tell what it was through her mud mask. Not content with making a bad thing worse, John opened his mouth to make a worse thing awful when the dark-haired depilatory technician murmured, "I believe it's time for madam's massage."

Madam did not move for many moments. Madam was busy pawing through her mental Rolodex, wondering which friend could be bribed to call her with a sudden surgical 'emergency.'

Madam was saved from relationship fraud by the insistent purr of the deep-voiced technician. "The curtains at your left will take you to…"

Dr. Clare Sussex straightened her tipping turban. She stood up. She gazed down at her beau of eleven weeks. Semi-reclined in a chair that looked half torture device, half sex-aid, her boyfriend was manicured, pedicured, coiffed, polished, and scrubbed. He was in the final phase of having his most personal of personal places artistically barbered. And how she had missed his leap from their agreed-upon casual dating to _anything_ to which the word love could be applied she did not know.

A massage therapist touched her elbow. Dr. Clare Sussex startled. Then, smiling ruefully, she decamped with speed.

Half naked, bare legs spread in front of a man he did not know, John watched her go, cleared his throat, and said, "Well that went well."

A long moment of silence followed.

Then, bowing once more over his careful work, Sherlock Holmes said, "I'm sure you know she was also seeing another doctor in the practice, that they just got back from a holiday to New Zealand and are contemplating being exclusive, and that she was less than keen on your taste in clothes, cologne, and hair style. This was likely the first in a progressive series of personal…upgrades."

John looked down. The curly-headed bringer of bad news looked up. John didn't even bother asking _how_ or _what_ or _why._ What John did do was feel suddenly very naked. He tried closing his legs. Being as they were held fast in stirrups, all the good doctor managed to do was clench fetchingly. He said, "Yeah, I know."

Sherlock paused in the delicate handling of his client's privates. He allowed his brows to raise.

"I'm not an idiot. No, actually I am. Love. _Love._ Who the hell says love after less than a dozen dates? I don't even think I meant it and…"

John faded off, frowned, looked right into the pale eyes of the man looking at him. And then he said something brilliant, so brilliant as a matter of fact that Sherlock's brows lofted as high as they could go.

"You don't actually do this for a living, do you?"

A whisper of scarlet flushed Sherlock's cheeks, and he murmured, "Why do you say that?"

John looked down at the man's motionless hands. Littered with small scars, not nearly as soft as they should be, they rested warmly and very _closely_ either side of John's cock. "Uh, you don't seem very…professional."

Sherlock could have hastily removed his hands from their non-professional pausing place. He could've castigated himself for his poor portrayal of a spa employee. Instead Sherlock did something else. When John Watson—who indeed isn't an idiot—said…

"If you're, uh, finished there, we could get a pint. Grouse about women. Or the rain. Or who did those stitches at the back of your wrist because that's just criminal."

…well Sherlock? He said yes.

It rained the whole way to the pub.

The beer was good.

The chips were better.

In the end they did not much talk about women.

_Dragonsally wanted John and Sherlock to have their privates "vajazzled." I told her I'd rather burn in the special hell than write that. Then I realised something sort of like it could be a nice way for the boys to meet. Hell is not half so warm as I expected._


	16. Blind Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Just out for a fuck then are you? Have enough friends you can't imagine making more? Well bully for you, mister, what a tender world yours must be."

_I'm not gay._

John stands just inside the cafe door and realises he never said that to the hospital administrator, the one who seems to love just three things: Healthcare, opera, and matchmaking. No, John hadn't said anything because it never occurred to him that it would occur to her he was gay.

And yet across an empty room, John's blind date.

A looker from the look of things—curly hair, fine cheekbones, a sensual mouth—but definitely, certainly, emphatically _male._

The man meets his eye and stands. John smiles, nods, and walks a very long twelve feet.

_He's not gay._

Sherlock Holmes does not allow himself to be 'set up.' Sex, love, romance—they're pursuits for the terminally _dull._

And yet…he'd grown so weary of talking to the skull that he did a spectacular series of not-good-things until at last he owed his absurdly-patient brother an absurdly large favour. Then, pretending pique, he'd said, "Oh all right, Mycroft. Tell your little opera friend I'll meet her 'enthralling' army doctor. I'm sure he's very _tedious."_

Sherlock showed up at the cafe forty-five minutes early. He fidgeted with his hair until it was a finger-twirled nest of curls. And he wondered if strange men kiss other strange men on first dates and was coffee in a park cafe even a date and…

…and then there he was, all straight-backed and small and smiling. And unequivocally, plainly, obviously _not gay._

"You must be Sherlock…"

When his boss had set them up John hadn't thought to ask about his date's rare name. The good doctor's gone out with an Envie, a Bronte, and a Brooklyn, Sherlock hadn't seemed any stranger.

"…I'm John."

Sherlock doesn't reach for the man's extended hand. Instead he stares at John's shoes, then his ears, then out the window. "You didn't know."

Shoving hands in his pockets, John frowns, and reflects that this is the very quickest a blind date's ever gone sour. Except is it a date? If the person you're supposed to date is the entirely wrong gender then—

"You can go."

John stops frowning and blinks his eyes wide. "What?"

Sherlock sits down with his cold coffee and, in a lonely cafe in the middle of Regent's park, he pretends he's alone. He's very good at doing this.

"I'm sorry, did you just _dismiss_ me?" John makes a noise that would be a growl if he were that sort, but he's not so it's just a big, cranky noise out of a little, cranky man.

The good doctor shifts so he's in Sherlock's line-of-vision. "No I didn't know you were a man, but you know what? I did have hopes for _human."_

In a movie this would be the point where John stomps off, never to be seen again. John's also not the sort to let idiots off lightly, so he doesn't.

What he does do is stand there and _stare._ No, no…he steps right on up to the other side of Sherlock's table, leans over, and _then_ he stares. Because _that's_ the sort John Watson is.

And because Sherlock Holmes is the sort who will outlive god trying to have the last word, he glares at his coffee cup and says, "Why on earth do you care who or what I am. I'm _wron_ —" Sherlock shakes his head to erase the last word, "I'm…the wrong _sex_ so—"

"Just out for a fuck then are you? Have enough friends you can't imagine making more? Well bully for you, mister, what a tender world yours must be."

John's breathing heavier than any of this warrants and he realises he's being a dick, dumping his own frustrations onto a stranger who doesn't owe him shit. He blows out an exasperated breath and says, "Well. Right. I am…so sorry."

John quarter turns crisply, nods at nothing, is about to walk away when Sherlock stands, still talking to his coffee. "Skinny vanilla latte extra hot, almond biscotti on the side."

Another crisp turn, this time back toward the table. "How did you…did my boss…uh. Yes. Please. But it's actually a mocha latte."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, grins. _"Mocha._ It's always something."

_These stories seem to lend themselves to repurposing of favourite Sherlock quotes. I'd love it if you shared yours! And yes, I ended a previous "The Day They Met" with exactly the same three words. Sherlock's the kind to stay with a goer._


	17. Chip Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock now knows exactly how far this will go…all the way up his street if he lets it. He is emphatically going to let it. By denying it entirely.

"You should use both hands."

Sherlock Holmes is nothing if not helpful.

"But move the right one more slowly."

Strike that.

"You'll finish at least thirty percent faster."

He's not helpful.

"And if you properly prepare yourself first that figure rises to thirty-eight."

Yet still Sherlock believes his advice is something to which everyone has a right.

"Finishing faster is the whole point, yes?"

But Sherlock's wrong.

John Watson spent many years in the military. John's dealt with his fair share of big gits desperate for attention. He's learned the best way to shut them up is to feign deafness.

"I know you can hear me."

However, sometimes John makes exceptions. Oh my yes. If his last nerve is trod on, John Watson's quite willing to give big gits all the attention they so desperately crave. Only not necessarily in the way that they crave it.

Licking his lips, John grins at the stranger queuing behind him. He gestures to his own groceries on the chip-and-pin machine. "Do it," he sighs softly to the man. _"Do it for me."_

The stranger doesn't even pause. He steps right on up, reaches for a bottle of wine.

"That's it. Show me the right way to _do it_ with those big hands of yours."

For the splitest of instances, Sherlock pauses. The woman next in the queue looks around to see if anyone heard that. Surreptitiously she begins filming with her phone.

"Wait!"

Everyone: Sherlock, a passing cashier, and that woman, pause.

"You said I…should prepare myself first."

Sherlock Holmes squints at the little man. The little man licks his lips again.

"I mean, I want to make it easier for you to _do it_ for me."

It's right then that Sherlock finally _gets_ it. He narrows his eyes at it.

"Though I don't want to rush you."

Sherlock decides to see how far _it_ will go.

"When I'm alone and I do it, I like to linger."

Listening carefully, Sherlock scans and bags more wine, some cheese, milk.

"I like to _touch_ everything."

That just left an absurd number of loose apples.

"Run my fingers over…things."

Sherlock's not a stickler about the law. He's not above piling a red apple with a green with a yellow and just entering the lot under one code.

"Sometimes get close enough to—" a deep breath, let out softly and very near by, "—smell things."

However, sometimes Sherlock makes exceptions. Listening carefully, he carefully enters the code for one apple.

"Even if people are watching."

The queue has grown. Six people are watching. Three of them don't even have groceries.

"Maybe especially when they're watching."

Sherlock mis-enters the code for the third apple. He thinks maybe he's done it on purpose. Or accidentally. Right now he's not sure which one would make him less cross with himself.

"Do you like it when they watch?"

Sherlock drops an apple. It's the only green one in the batch. He feels briefly bad about that. Now the man won't have any green apples.

"A man like you…I bet you like when people watch."

The short man is right behind him now. Sherlock fumbles more apples. The woman wonders if her phone is getting all the audio.

Sherlock now knows exactly how far this will go…all the way up his street if he lets it. He is emphatically going to let it. By denying it entirely.

Sherlock puts down the apples. He turns toward the small man. Then Sherlock does his _thing._

"I know you feel strongly about your heterosexuality, I know you have a reputation as a bit of a Lothario, as a matter of fact I know you were chatting up someone in this queue not two minutes ago."

Both men glance at the woman with the camera phone. She smiles and does a little finger wave.

"Then there's your careful shave, the tuck of your shirt, the expensive wine but the cheap cheese: You have a date with…your boss?…which means _this_ little flirt is a ruse and you have no intention of putting out, as the Americans so quaintly say. So, you can stop trying to trick me, it won't work."

John had a girlfriend once who said he was perverse. Not content with over-long hours as a doctor, he went and joined the army so he could then risk his own life while saving others.

Then, as now, John didn't agree. He needs…danger's not the right word, it never has been…he needs…exhilaration. John needs stimulation, anticipation.

Arousal.

A clench of the jaw, a lick of the lips, an _oh yeah?_ expression as he went to tip toes, and John Watson leaned toward Sherlock Holmes and—

* * *

_"That's it?"_

Bethany Reeder's very best friend grabbed the camera phone from her hand, stared at the video's last frame and whispered as if her heart were breaking, "That can't be it Beth. Please tell me there's more."

Bethany Reeder looked at her very best friend. Then at her own phone. Then at her friend. She murmured softly, as if her heart were breaking, "That's right when the battery died."

Bethany looked at her friend. Her friend looked as if her heart were absolutely breaking. Bethany looked west. Bethany debated. She made up her mind.

Leaning close to her friend and giggling, as if suddenly tipsy, Bethany said softly, "But I sort of wrote a few things. About what I imagine they did after that kiss. Do you want to [read them](../../../users/AtlinMerrick/works)?"

_"At a chip and pin machine," prompted EnrapturedReader and then[my favourite idiom search tool](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/) said 'chip away' and I thought yeah, that’s what Sherlock does, he chips away at obstacles. And then the story turned and John started to chip away at Sherlock. And then I got self-referential and here we are._


	18. Want Versus Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock sits and stares at the little doctor with the easy laugh and the easy smile, and he wonders if everything about the man is easy, then he wonders what would happen if he said that, if he went over there and...

Sherlock stares.

It doesn't matter that the man sees him do it. Some people get annoyed if you _smile_ at them, Sherlock knows that for firsthand fact, so he might as well stare. Since that's what he wants to do, that's what he does.

It's not that the man's particularly pretty. He's all right in a compact, loose-jointed way. He moves comfortable in his skin. And it's not as if the man's easily-overheard repartee is all that winning. Oh, he gets on, makes people laugh, but anyone can do that. Even Sherlock can pretend to be nice.

So it's not the man's body or bad jokes that draw Sherlock. To be honest he's not sure what he's seeing when he stares, but Sherlock knows he'll keep doing it until the man makes him stop.

He wishes the man would make him stop.

It'd be very ambitious of him, of course. Sherlock out masses him by more than a stone and a good half foot. Still, it'd be brilliant if he tried. Like any tantrum-throwing child Sherlock'll take shouts over silence any day.

But it's a hospital cafeteria, not some seedy pub, so the only time Sherlock's heard the man raise his voice was to say something nice. _You look fucking fantastic,_ to a woman who clearly hadn't expected to see him. Didn't seem to matter to the man that she didn't stop to talk. It's not like he lacks for companionship, every time he comes down for lunch or a coffee _someone_ stops to talk with him.

Sherlock thought about doing that once. Walking up to the man as if they know one another. He's good at that, too. Sometimes Sherlock does it just to see he still can, convince a stranger they know him, trick someone into revealing too much.

He didn't do it, though. Decided he didn't care if he could deceive the man, because he was sure he could. It's not hard, it never is. Even if they're liars people want to believe other people aren't. Sherlock's good at making use of that little foible too, when he can.

Which isn't often enough, really. Oh he's trying. He hangs around the morgue downstairs, or up here in the cafeteria, waiting for that DI to come by again—he's here often enough, and sometimes he listens to what Sherlock says. That last time…Sherlock knows something clicked behind the DI's eyes. That maybe he realised Sherlock could be of use.

He hasn't been by since then—was it only last week?—so Sherlock waits. He tries going down to the morgue but they don't let him in any more, so he sits up here and he stares at the little doctor with the easy laugh and the easy smile and he wonders if everything about the man is easy, and then he wonders what would happen if he said that, if he went over there and—

"You could always just say hello, you know."

When you stare too long, sometimes you stop seeing. Sherlock puts his tea cup down with a clatter, looks up. The doctor's standing there, casual as you please and smiling. As if he knows Sherlock.

The doctor holds out his hand, "John Watson."

Sherlock slowly takes and shakes it.

John sits down. "So. Greg Lestrade thinks you're some kind of cranky wunderkind. I think you're lonely. Who's right?"

Since he was about eight years old Sherlock's known what to say to get what he wants. Most of the things he has to say are by necessity lies but that's fine, if they get him what he wants he'll lie all day. And this doctor knows the Scotland Yard detective inspector, the one who _has what Sherlock wants._

The funny thing is, give a man enough time alone, enough days, weeks, and years of forced reflection and he'll not only learn what he wants, better yet, he'll learn what he needs.

So right then, instead of answering the doctor with a lie that would get him what he wants, Sherlock answers the man with a truth that'll get him what he needs.

"Overheard you say you're looking for a flatshare. I've got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Interested?"

John smiles.

_I woke up with this already writing itself in my head, which has happened exactly never. I hope it happens again._


	19. Kiss and Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone wanted to play Kiss the Doctor...

John Watson knocked back another eggnog and scowled at the tall stranger.

"Oh yes I damn well can."

In peripheral vision Sherlock Holmes watched two women hesitate, then pause on their way through the kitchen.

"I believe you can't."

John was perfectly aware arguing with annoying men at very nice parties was a bit not good but—

"Let me amend that: I'm certain you can't."

—this one was _really_ annoying.

John Watson placed his empty glass upon the kitchen table. He hitched up his jeans and lifted his chin. He hadn't gained a three continents moniker by being shy, retiring, or disinclined to say yes. While he hadn't precisely been sweetheart to the regiment, even he admits it was a close thing.

"I will bet you a hundred bloody quid I can."

Another woman and two men managed to not-quite pass through the kitchen.

"You're unemployed and sleeping on your sister's lilo. You don't have one hundred pounds to lose."

"Who told you—" John shook his head to clear it of spiked eggnog and annoyance. He would not be diverted. "I don't know who you think you are, mister, marching around telling me about me, but I'm positive I can and do you want to know why?"

Sherlock Holmes snorted and rolled his eyes. "Because you're straight?"

John rolled right back and wondered how Daniel knew this giant git. All of Daniel's friends were nice. Gay and _nice._

This one was cranky, sober, and entirely too tall. "No, because I'm _observant."_

"Oh really?" Sherlock grinned wolfish, and held out his hand.

John reached back. "One hundred pounds says I can kiss a dozen people, eyes closed, and tell who's male and who's female."

They shook.

* * *

Everyone wanted to play Kiss the Doctor.

After decamping to the sitting room—the kitchen could no longer contain the interested parties—Sherlock paced the small space left and laid down ground rules.

Before he could put the full stop on his last directive—"And absolutely no touching"—a non-scent-wearing, facial hair-free person bowed before the blindfolded doctor and pressed their lips to his.

And so it began.

That first kiss was ridiculously soft, which made John think it was a man trying to kiss the way he thought a woman would. He was wrong. And right. It was a woman trying to kiss the way she thought a man would kiss if he was trying to pretend he was a woman (yes, she was overthinking it).

The second kiss was the kind of friendly buss John likes. Firm but not aggressive, a bright hello, a promise, and John was sure it was from the host's sister. (It was from the host.)

The third and fourth kisses were odd in opposite directions. One was strangely dry, as if the kisser was dehumidifying him as they smooched, while the second was sloppy-wet and poorly aimed. He correctly guessed both were women.

The fifth and sixth kissers each smelt of eggnog, which made John giggle, and he was sure both were men (one was). The seventh definitely was and the eighth and ninth kisses were both from the tall, pretty, black woman who'd been chatting him up earlier.

The tenth kiss was disqualified when the kisser growled low, the eleventh likewise because the man couldn't stop giggling.

The twelfth kiss was a long time coming and that's one reason John knew who the kisser was. Again, John has made himself fairly available to a fairly wide array of people on this earth and you learn a few things being so easy—uh, so experienced. You learn that sometimes people pick fights because they want your attention, and sometimes even tall know-it-alls are too shy or awkward to go about it in the regular way.

So when that final kiss came John did what he had not done for any of the others. He leaned into it, he opened his mouth to it. And when he heard the faint baritone moan in reply, John licked into Sherlock's mouth and whispered, "I win."

Sherlock, hands rising to cup John's face, could not be reached for comment.

_WL Chastain prompted meeting under mistletoe, which of course made me think of kissing and that lead to this. Thank you WL! P.S. Regular chaptered-story publishing resumes about two weeks after the holiday. Thanks for continuing to comment during this hectic time!_


	20. Skin Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets it, he does, because John's good at snap judgments, at understanding the gravity of any given moment. And so the doctor knows the man isn't high or drunk, he's just one thing: Hungry.

He doesn't move.

He doesn't move.

He doesn't move.

It's noon on a summer day and Portobello Road is full of bodies, a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd surging slow along a meandering mile of this, that, and the over-priced other thing.

And in the middle of the street, in the middle of these thousands, stands Sherlock Holmes, not moving. Staring. _Away._

Clad in a thin and faded t-shirt he's the rock around which these human rapids flow, and because this is high noon on a hot London day, the bodies pressing against him are as bare as he. Their sweat-slick arms rub at his, they are so many strangers and they push past him, skin against skin against skin.

And Sherlock Holmes does not move.

"Move!"

Only a fool tries driving down Portobello Road on a summer Saturday, but the world's in no short supply of those, so the lorry driver leans out his window and yells again.

The thing to do with fools is ignore them, and so at first everyone does, tourist, trader, and the man motionless in their midst.

But the driver's not really such a fool. Before long he begins cajoling the crowd, joking, teasing, complimenting, and in slow degrees shoppers clear the road, make way for the man with a van full of Bond Street knock-offs.

Then it's just one man left standing, the away man.

He doesn't hear the driver.

He doesn't hear the crowd.

And then, up close, he hears a soft-voiced man.

"Hey, you're in the way."

Sherlock blinks down, John Watson looks up. And starts deducing.

_Pupils blown._

The lorry driver tries teasing the tall man from the road.

_Trembling._

The grudgingly stilled crowd wants to move again, they shout words that are not as kind.

_Lethargic._

The driver gives up, begins inching his big truck forward, and that's when John Watson slides fingers around the away man's wrist, skin on skin on sweat-slick skin…and the tall man keens.

And suddenly John gets it, he does, knows exactly what's going on because John's good at snap judgments, at understanding the gravity of any given moment. And so the doctor knows the away man isn't high or drunk or dim, he's just one thing:

_Hungry._

So John feeds him. Keeping hold of the bare wrist, he splays the fingers of his other hand wide on the man's sweat-slick back, and gently, persistently, John moves the rock through quickly-reclosing rapids, up onto a kerb, down a side street.

And it's there, in the nominal quiet, that John feels suddenly awkward, full of second guesses, and he knows he should let the man go but there's a problem with that, a really big problem.

John's ravenous, too.

They call it skin hunger, the need to touch and be touched, the cell-deep craving to know through contact that you're not alone.

Countless times John's seen this silent cry for comfort: Hospitalised children clutching unfamiliar nurses, old men and women in care homes reaching out to any passerby. People die from this sort of starvation, John knows that, it kills as sure as accident or disease.

Even so, John's about to let the man go because it's not appropriate what he's doing, it's not _polite._

Fortunately Sherlock Holmes doesn't understand appropriate and he's even less familiar with polite, so when John lets him go, when John starts to step away, Sherlock wraps his arms around the man's shoulders and, sweetly, strangely, he rocks John and whispers, "Shhh."

After long moments John reaches back. And so two men are fed.

Over the coming years John will teach Sherlock many things, things about what's right and what's wrong, about when and where and why.

But that summer day Sherlock taught John something as important: He taught him that sometimes appropriate isn't. And polite? Polite is just another name for starvation.

_221B_Hound wrote a beautiful vampire AU called[Skin Hunger](../../1012260), a phrase so evocative I had to learn more. People do indeed die from lack of touch, the only sense we need to survive. In a world of so many, we actually do touch so few and that seems incredibly sad. Hug someone today, if you can. Feed them. And yourself. (And thank you 221B_Hound, thank you!) P.S. [47 *new* stories of how they met](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is%20) over here._


	21. If the Shoe Fits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John started to say something, but the tall man handed him a box, flicked out coat tails, and settled on a bench, imperious. John went to his knees in front of him, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

"If you were a woman would you wear these?" John Watson blinked earnestly at the six-foot man with the fine coat, then blushed and looked away. "Uh, never mind, that was a stupid question."

Sherlock Holmes reached across the shoe-strewn table, plucked the heel from the short man's hand and said, "Describe her in three words."

Squinting in over-bright department store light, John frowned. "Tall. Dark. Imperious."

Sneering at the shoe as if it were someone else's opinion, Sherlock said, "Then no, if I were that woman I would not wear these. Wrong colour, the heel's too low, and they're positively _refined."_

John started to say something, but the man had already dropped the shoe and moved to a display of stilettos. John followed.

"People forever think the tall wish to be short. They don't. So that beige, kitten-heeled number? Ridiculous. Unless you _want_ her to think her height bothers you."

John started to say something, but the tall man handed him a box, flicked out coat tails, and settled on a bench, imperious. John went to his knees in front of him, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

Sherlock toed off a Fratelli Borgioli, placed a long, bare foot in John's hand. The good doctor slipped a black-velvet stiletto on to it, then shod the other foot.

Sherlock stood and looked down. On his knees, John looked up. All kinds of magical things happened in the intervening space, none of which either man perceived at that moment. That did not stop them from absolutely changing everything.

With a lifted chin Sherlock turned, walked-strutted a dozen feet. He turned with a sway, returned, stood directly in front of John, legs akimbo. It was a mere quirk of fate that his crotch was at the height of John's mouth.

"These should better suit your girlfriend."

"Sister."

An imperious brow. _"Sister."_

"Uh, no, _no._ They're for my sister's girlfriend."

The loft of another presumptuous brow.

"Uh, _no._ For my sister to give—look she's bad at shop— _never mind._ I'm not dating…I haven't got a…I'm…never _mind."_

Sherlock Holmes extended a hand. "Come."

For a man on his knees, the good doctor was awfully light-headed. He swayed woozily, reflexively clutched the man's fancy trousers, then squealed.

("Yes you did," Sherlock murmured against John's neck seventeen weeks later, "oh yes you did.")

On six-inch stilettos Sherlock slowly squatted, looked John in the eye. "There's a rather large—" air quotes "—shoe carnival at Selfridges right now. Tell me more about this girlfriend on the way and we'll get you into your sister's good graces."

Sherlock rose. "Though perhaps you won't need to be. I've got my eye on a nice little place in central London. Together we should be able to afford it."

John stood, started to say something, then changed his mind about what he was going to say. He gestured at the abandoned Borgiolis. "Your shoes."

Sherlock glanced at the expensive Oxfords. "My brother needed a new pair anyway, those have a scratch. And I like these better, don't you?"

("Yes you did," John would say seventeen weeks and two minutes from this moment. "You licked your lips and cocked your hip like a giddy stripper.")

Right there, in an over-bright store somewhere north along Regent Street, neither man could possibly know that seventeen weeks and several minutes from this moment the only things getting _cocked_ would be, well, _them._

_So in this series of other ways the boys might have first met, it was Catalyst’s idea that they do so over a pair of pretty shoes. Being as she created the ever-wonderful[Sherlock-in-Heels](http://sherlock-in-heels.tumblr.com) Tumblr I think you can understand her need. Thank you Catalyst! And I'm so sorry I've not yet returned to long stories. As soon as some unexpected issues are resolved it's back to much longer tales, and the completion of "Hair Raising." P.S. Here are the shoes [Sherlock just put on](http://sherlock-in-heels.tumblr.com/post/42369823358/they-went-marvelously-well-with-a-popped-collar)..._


	22. Of Note

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> * My name is Sherlock.  
> * I don't know if I'm a good friend.  
> * I don't know what to do next.

_Nothing happens to me._

"What?"

The pub owner answers him again, but Sherlock Holmes doesn't hear her this time either. Doesn't matter, he's already told the woman which employee absconded with the holiday receipts, where the pilfered gin is, and that her girlfriend isn't gay.

_I'm so alone._

No, Sherlock's mind isn't on a case that doesn't even rate a number. It's on the three-sentence note in his hand, the one he found tucked in the antique card catalogue just inside the pub's front door.

"Oh that thing's just for show," the owner had said when he'd started checking each white cubby for clues.

_Is anyone there?_

The dozens of drawers had been empty—except one. A folded serviette, on it ten words, the scent of ink still clinging.

As the owner goes off to write Sherlock's meager cheque, he scrawls a reply.

_* Alone protects you. No one can hurt you if you're alone._

And so it begins.

* * *

_Do you feel protected?_

It isn't the response Sherlock expects when he returns two days later. Neither is his own reply.

_* No._

He orders a beer. He'll do so each time he comes.

_Are you alone, too?_

Sherlock never drinks it.

_* Yes. Always._

But then again, he doesn't stay long.

_Because you want to be?_

All Sherlock does is check the cubbies, then leave his response.

_* No._

He's deduced the writer is a man and that he comes on Sunday and Thursday nights.

_I'm sorry._

So Sherlock comes on Monday and Friday afternoons.

_* Why should you be sorry?_

He's an active man, is Sherlock, but here he reacts, answers and only rarely asks.

_Because it's hard to make friends. Sometimes I think it's the hardest thing there is. Don't you?_

And here Sherlock doesn't mock, lie, or dissemble.

_* I don't know. I've never had one._

Here he offers truths. He doesn't know why.

_We don't know a thing about each other, I don't even know your name, but…I'm willing if you are._

The last half of the sentence is crossed out and added beneath:

_That sounded stranger than I meant it and I can't find another napkin but, yeah, if you want a friend…_

Sherlock shoves the little note in his pocket. He drinks his entire beer down. He leaves without writing an answer.

* * *

Sherlock means never to return to the pub.

His resolve lasts six days. Five if you count walking past twelve times. Three if you count the discarded replies he writes on a stack of old post. Not even one if you include his repeated rereadings of the man's note.

No matter how you track it, Sherlock does return to the pub, this time on a Sunday night.

He finds a corner and observes. The man's identity is easy enough to deduce. Sherlock tells himself he'll watch a few minutes, then leave.

"Hello."

The man Sherlock turns to face is short, serious-looking, and gesturing to the bartender. "Wallace…uh, he told me you're the one who, who was…" The man frowns. "These were…you never answered…" He hands Sherlock a small stack of cocktail napkins.

Sherlock's mouth falls open. He's been watching the wrong man. He got it wrong.

But Sherlock doesn't get time to throw a wobbly, because the man is talking again.

"I'm John. I just thought I'd, um, say hi."

The man takes a breath. Sherlock says nothing. The man takes another. Sherlock says more nothing. The man leaves.

Sherlock looks at his hand. He looks at the napkins. He looks a long time.

Then Sherlock reads.

 _Sorry if that was a bit much last time,_ says the first.

 _I'm lonely. I don't want to be,_ the second.

_All my friends are gone. Gone to war, gone to smaller cities, just gone._

_I am a good friend._

_You haven't come back. If that's because of me I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—No, I'm not sorry. Nothing changes unless you change it. Unless you try. I tried. I hope you tried somewhere else and it worked._

_Bye._

Sherlock counts his breaths.

Sherlock doesn't look up.

Sherlock is afraid that if he looks up the man—that John will be gone. And Sherlock doesn't look up because he's afraid John won't be gone. Instead Sherlock turns each napkin over. He writes.

_* My name is Sherlock._  
 _* I don't know if I'm a good friend._  
 _* I don't know what to do next._  
 _* I don't know._  
 _* I don't know_  
 _* I don'—_

Sherlock stops writing and Sherlock doesn't look up. He wants more than anything to look up. He wants more than anything for John to come back, to be the brave one.

But Sherlock doesn't look up and John doesn't come back and so Sherlock reaches for a fresh pile of napkins and Sherlock writes and writes some more and then, chin to chest, he goes to the card catalogue and puts a note into every one of the four dozen drawers and a pretty patron nearby says something witty but he doesn't look up, Sherlock doesn't look up, he goes to the pub window and he counts his breaths and he doesn't look up.

It takes forever.

It takes ninety eight breaths.

John stands beside him. Sherlock looks up.

* * *

After the pub closes the bartender opens the cubbies. He finds in each a single serviette. On every one, the same two words.

Brave words.

Life-changing words.

Words you can speak with the barest breath.

_* I'll try._

_I went to a pub with the charming[Kate Lear](../../../users/Kate_Lear/works) and there was [an old card catalogue](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/74284541698/of-note-nothing-happens-to-me-what-the-pub) functioning as a pub table. Kate suggested John and Sherlock might meet by leaving one another notes inside, and here we are. Thank you Kate!_


	23. Pardon My French

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you want to annoy your brother?"
> 
> Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Always."

"You fill my heart," said Gregory Lestrade.

"Tu combles mon cœur," interpreted his lover.

The man at the next café table made retching noises.

"You soar my soul," murmured the smitten DI.

"Tu fais s'envoler mon âme," echoed his sweetheart.

The man one café table over mock-choked _louder._

"I will kill your little brother and hide his body," whispered Lestrade into his sweetie's ear, to which Mycroft Holmes replied in such ribald detail that Greg giggled like a hormone-addled schoolboy.

Absolutely at the end of his ever-short tether, Sherlock Holmes stood up noisily, took three steps left, and sat down clamourously on an already-occupied sofa.

"Tu!" he spat. "They've progressed to _tu_ inside four dates, one shag, and fifty-three nauseating French kisses."

John Watson, the man upon the sofa's other end, paused in sipping his skinny mocha latte. He looked at the grumpy stranger. He cut right to the chase: "You counted their kisses."

Sherlock looked at the smiling man with the appalling taste in coffee. "Of course, he's my _brother."_

Where most people would lean away from such a nugget of not-quite-right, John leaned toward. "In their bedroom?"

Sherlock recoiled. "I follow him when he's annoying, but I _do_ draw the line at full nudity."

John did not, at that time, address the implication there was no such line near _partial_ nudity. No, John addressed something even more inappropriate.

"Do you want to annoy your brother?"

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Always."

"Give him some of his own back."

John could almost actually hear the man thinking through the various permutations of this. And he saw the moment the man arrived at the exact wrong one. Mostly because the man was suddenly panting sexily in his face.

"Uh no, I meant…"

John never finished the thing he was going to say, the thing that went something like, "Uh no, I meant why don't you loudly and inappropriately say how inappropriate their behaviour is? You could even make it more uncomfortable for them by tugging at your trousers suggestively and say their behaviour is making you _'uncomfortable.'_ And maybe I'll sort of back you up on all this because let me be honest: I've not had any locum work in a month and I sit in this coffee shop four hours a day sometimes and this would be the most stimulating thing I've done in weeks."

No, John didn't say any of that. Instead he made a big manly sniffing noise to show that he was straight, and he tilted his chin up to give the pretty man's mouth better access to his mouth, and he waited.

* * *

"About the time you started _moaning,_ John."

That's what Mycroft always answers when John asks, "No, but really, when did you and Greg actually leave that day?" but John knows that that answer's bollocks because John's positive he didn't start moaning until _after_ the manager came over to say Sherlock and he were behaving inappropriately, and John's pretty much one thousand percent certain that Greg and Mycroft had left long before then, but fine, _fine._

Mycroft can believe whatever makes Mycroft _comfortable._ At this point it'd be entirely inappropriate for John to insist otherwise.

_Lobstergirl loves Mystrade with glee and utter abandon. She loved a wee Mystrade snippet of mine so much that I needed to give her a wee tiny snippet more. And then there was French kissing, inappropriate moaning, and badly-phrased endearments (thank you Chocolamousse for helping translate Greg's very goofy sweet nothings)._


	24. Breathing Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why did you thank me?"
> 
> John knows when people will hear. Yet even when he knows they won't, he talks anyway…because sometimes it's he who needs to hear.
> 
> "Because you let me help. It's good you know, helping."

Sherlock Holmes takes a deep breath.

_Smell is the first human sense to develop._

Sherlock exhales.

_Even in the womb humans recognise different odors._

Sherlock takes another chest-filling breath.

_Our ability to discern odors is higher at night than in the morning._

The small, humid room in which he stands alone smells like a clean, straw-filled stable.

_With six million scent receptors, a human being remembers scents more accurately than sights._

As his brain frantically retrieves olfactory facts for which he has no use, Sherlock Holmes presses a fist to his chest and for a long moment he does not breathe.

* * *

"—I was very young, but I remember the smoke always smelled like cherries."

John Watson bends over the glass-topped counter, gazes at the display of gleaming pipes. The sales clerk lingers a polite while, then just a little longer. Finally she turns toward a less nostalgic, more well-heeled customer.

John smiles to himself. If he'd been fractious, very gloomy with his important four-year-old problems, the scent of his grandfather's pipe smoke always soothed him.

It was years before John realised that grandad Ideal would come seek him out on those childish, ill-tempered days. Then he'd light his pipe, John would cuddle close, and surrounded by the smoky-sweet scent of cherries, together they'd grow calm.

* * *

Standing in the tobacconist's glass-walled humidor, Sherlock opens his mouth wider, takes a ragged breath, then does it again, again, againagainagain _again_ until he's woozy with the scent of pipe tobacco and cigars. But it still isn't helping. This time it doesn't _calm._

Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't _matter_ how much he tells them about how much he sees, they still don't believe him, they still refuse to _see._

Sherlock fists at his shirt, and moaning he thinks _I could do it, who would care? I could buy a thousand pounds worth of cigars and I could breathe and breathe and breathe until I couldn't_ breathe _._

* * *

No one stops John from roaming, grinning reminiscent, touching pricey lighters, deep-bowled pipes, shiny wooden boxes.

Drawn to an earthy scent and the amber and russet glow of open cigar boxes, John enters the tobacconist's humidor and—

"—can't, can't—"

One stride across the tiny room and John's got his hand on the gasping man's belly, whispering in his ear. "Breathe here, right here. Breathe deep until you feel it here."

Bent double, sweaty hands sliding slick on his knees, Sherlock tries, he tries to breathe but he—

"—can't—"

John pushes him to his knees, then his back, lays his other hand on the man's chest. "Look. Look at my hand. Do you see it? Make it go up. Do that for me, make my hand go up. Slow. Slow."

Sherlock grunts, he can't, he—

John grabs Sherlock's chin, turns him so they look right in each other's eyes. He makes a hissing sound through pursed lips and nods _like this, like this._

Sherlock presses at the small hand on his chest, mimics with his mouth, pushes out a long, wheezy…slow…slower…slowest breath.

"That's it, just like that. Can you get it down here?" John rubs at a suit coat-covered belly. "Right on down, deep and slow and…"

 _"…yesssss."_ Sherlock's eyes drift closed on the exhale and he counts the heartbeats thrumming away beneath their hands. _OneTwoOneTwoOneTwo…_

Long minutes later the small man shifts, sits back on his heels. "Good job," he murmurs. "Good. Thank you. Thank you, that's good. I'm John."

Sherlock breathes deep, lets it out sibilant and slow, "Shhhhherlock."

Another long minute, two. Sherlock releases the hand on his chest. The one on his belly withdraws. Sherlock sits up, looks around.

"You're—"

"I _know_ where I am."

John nods, pulls into himself in a way no one ever sees because no one sees the doctor who saves them, not really. And it's fine, it's all fine, John understands that people need plausible deniability of their own fragility.

"Good. Good. Well, I'm going to call—"

"No." Sherlock frowns at the open boxes of Nicaraguan cigars, then at the Cubans, too. He stands slowly, looks at the wall.

After several silent seconds John nods again, rises. "Right. Good. You should—" He stops. Starts again. "I'd—" No. Never mind. He knows when people will hear.

Another nod at nothing and John takes hold of the humidor's brushed silver door handle, tugs, feels the soft whoosh of cool shop air.

"Why?"

John turns. The door whispers closed again. Sherlock's still looking at the wood paneled wall and it's to it he speaks. "Why did you thank me?"

John knows when people will hear. Yet even when he knows they won't, sometimes he talks anyway because sometimes it's he who needs to hear what he has to say.

"Because you let me help. It's good you know, helping."

Sherlock wants to say things right now. A dozen things about helping, about trying to help and how they _don't let him_ they don't _want_ him and Sherlock wants to talk about the stupid spot on his stupid lung, the one they thought for months was cancer, the one that made him finally stop smoking but sometimes he can't stand it, sometimes, sometimes he just can't breathe unless there's smoke and fire and—

Sherlock puts a hand on his belly, another on his chest, and he says small and soft between small, soft breaths, "Help me."

John steps close, his hand settling over one with long fingers. And gently, gently they tell one another…

"Breathe."

_This was inspired by a wee line about tobacco shops in chapter two of MyCapeIsPlaid's marvelous[Corpus Hominis](http://archiveofourown.org/works/790501), and then later by an hour-long visit to a London tobacconist where a lovely young man told me all about cigars._


	25. Forgettable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time John and Sherlock met, it was completely forgettable...

The first time was forgettable.

The autumn day was warm, John was walking past St. Paul's, and there was Mike, waving from an outdoor cafe table.

John came over just as Mike's dark-haired companion walked off, mobile to his ear, calling back, "Won't be a moment Mike, must berate my brother more directly this time."

The two doctors caught up briefly, made plans for dinner. By the time Sherlock's 'moment' was over, John was long gone.

The second time was forgettable.

"I think it was your recommendation that clinched it, Mike."

Standing in St. Bart's courtyard, Stamford chaffed his hands warm. "Well this old pile is lucky to have you, John. I'm glad you're here."

A trio of pathologists walked past, trailed by a dark-haired man in a long coat. "I didn't _know,_ Molly, I noticed—" Sherlock nodded at Mike without breaking stride in his stride _or_ harangue. "—and if you'd take my word as gospel you'll find post mortems will move along more quickly."

As the group clattered off John checked his watch. "Damn, I'm due in outpatients." Stamford nodded. "And I'm late for a lecture. We'll get a pint soon."

The third time, in Bart's cafeteria, was mostly forgettable.

"I wouldn't even know what to do at this point."

"I've never heard John Watson decline a date with a beautiful woman."

"You've never talked to a John Watson who's had a string of six truly awful first dates. I'm sure your cousin's lovely Mike, but I couldn't pull right now if you gave me a rope and a winch. Coffee?"

"Things'll change soon, just you wait. Uh, an Americano please, I've got to mark papers tonight."

John went to fetch coffees and dither over cakes. In the end he returned with a slice to share and in time to see a vaguely familiar dark-haired bloke drop a twenty pound note in front of Mike and, without breaking stride call back, "And yes that one's clean of pus and fecal matter."

John shrugged at Stamford, who shrugged back and pocketed the note. "He's always like that."

The fourth time, nearly twelve months after the first, was unforgettable.

John could do with more of these sorts of jobs. Just as with the locum work, the good doctor had Mike to thank for this, and _this_ was a damn sight easier than giving two dozen kids their booster jabs, being puked on by two of them, and berated by the parents of three.

Yes, for this little moonlighting gig all John had to do was wear a tux and tie, hold a flute of something fizzy and non-alcoholic, and keep a doctorly eye on the famous pretty people as they got rat arsed and gave one another some sort of TV award.

It wasn't until a dreadfully dull two hours in—and they'd only just got to best supporting production assistant to the executive editing producer or something similar—that John noticed the dark-haired man circling the edges of the gathering.

John knew that face, he knew that face, he knew— _ah!_ Mike's friend.

As they got to the award for best theme music in an advert of over fifteen seconds but less than thirty, a bored silly John wandered toward the dark-haired man, ready to strike up a conversation.

He never got the chance. Instead of introducing himself, John took hold of the big man's arm and said, "Mate, you look terrible."

Sherlock Holmes turned, he frowned at John. He knew that face, knew that face, he knew— _gaaaaaaaah!_

Sherlock vomited all over John's shoes.

* * *

In the end, the good detective survived his poisoning, courtesy of Dr. Watson.

In the end the poisoner was caught, courtesy of Mr. Holmes.

And in the end the TV producer who had been the real target of the dastardly deed was unharmed. She would go on to have an extensive and busy career producing a great many sitcoms, too much reality TV, and a long-running night-time soap.

However, the thing for which she'd be most proud, a dozen years hence, would be an award-winning, two-part documentary about a detecting duo she met at a little awards ceremony one long ago night in east London.

They had been, even then, unforgettable.

_SweetLateJuliet said something like: "What if John and Sherlock met…and at first it wasn't anything special?" and that seemed like a mighty intriguing idea, thank you Juliet! Also, thank you Artemis Fortune for your favourite episode quote (take my word as gospel)._


	26. That Holmes Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John had heard about this Holmes guy, a poncy git if the stories were true, a mouthy man who'd second-guess every diagnosis, argue the placement of a plaster. The thing is, when John asked why the man was in hospital so often his idiot colleagues couldn't tell him.
> 
> So John Watson went to the source.

"You do it."

"I did it once. I won't do it again."

"Well I learned from _your_ mistake and I'm not doing it.

"Someone has to go in there and—"

"Fucking bloody hell, I'll do it you spoiled babies."

John Watson went chin down and stomping toward room 12. _You try doctoring when it's_ actually _hard, you poncy gits._ John didn't say that, wouldn't say it any of the times his colleagues complained about a patient. Neither of them had served, neither had put a soldier back together to a soundtrack of moaning because the morphine was running out and most of the oxycodone had again "disappeared."

They'd grown used to easy consults, deferential families, to nurses smart enough to protect their egos. They'd forgotten that when people were hurt they lashed out and _hurt._ It didn't make them bad, it made them human.

Sure he'd heard about this Holmes guy, another poncy git if the stories were true, a mouthy man who'd second-guess every diagnosis, argue the placement of a plaster each time he came in bruised and bleeding. The thing is, when John asked _why_ the man was in hospital so often his idiot colleagues couldn't tell him.

John opened 12 quietly.

The patient—sitting up in bed, eyes closed, both hands elegantly gesturing as if placing small things just so—stopped what he was doing, opened his eyes, and then his mouth.

"I used to do something like that in med school, write formula and mnemonics in the air. It helped me remember. My girlfriend said I looked like I was having seizures. Yours looks more graceful."

The man closed his mouth on words unsaid, and nearly smiled.

"Are you going to take your pain meds?"

The man shook his head no.

"Is there a reason?"

The man shook his head yes.

"Okay. Well you got it pretty bad with that cricket bat and I know you hurt like a bastard right now. Is there a way I can help with the pain?"

The man smiled for real this time.

The desert taught John how to be the kind of doctor he wanted most to be. Taught him about the part of the Hippocratic oath that said warmth and sympathy were as important as the surgeon's knife, the chemist's drug…or his own damned ego.

So for the next twenty minutes John offered the warmth of his attention and the sympathy of his regard. An hour later, he shared a spare five minutes. Then later another ten. And when John was off for the night he pulled a chair up beside the man's bed and listened to him talk, and sometimes John said "amazing," and sometimes "incredible," and when John said, "I need a flatmate," the man was unsurprised to hear himself say yes.

It was the first time that 'the Holmes guy' would say yes to the army doctor, but it wouldn't be the last. Though he _does_ still argue about the god damn plasters.

_Medeia456 said maybe they could meet when Sherlock was vulnerable, perhaps a hospital. Why I felt we would hear none of Sherlock's words I don't know…_


	27. Escort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson's eyes shifted back and forth fast. His sister does this to him. She always does this to him. She plays word games. No, not games, ploys. No, not ploys. Fishing. It's fishing. Harry will say a lie so that he corrects with the truth, a truth that's his business, except…well…except...

"You're still looking."

"I'm not looking."

"Yes you are."

"No I'm not."

"Why does it matter if I think you're looking?"

"Because I'm not looking. If I was looking I would admit I'm looking."

"There's only one person over there and your face is facing that person. You're looking."

"Well _look_ at him."

"I'm looking."

"Men don't do that."

"Clearly they do."

"Well not any men I know."

"That's not the same as saying men don't do that."

"Do they? Do they do that?"

"They do."

"Why?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I don't. I just…it's just…I've just never seen a man _do_ that."

"I like it when they do that."

"Why?"

"Because he's pretty. I'm gay John, not blind. Like you."

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I heard you say something confusing."

"Which part was confusing?"

Silence.

"Because from what I can see _you_ can see, so obviously you're not blind."

John Watson's eyes shifted back and forth fast. His sister does this to him. She always does this to him. She plays word games. No, not games, _ploys._ No, not ploys. Fishing. It's fishing. Harry will say a lie so that he corrects with the truth, a truth that's _his_ business, but before he knows what he's done he's blurted it out and so no, just no, he would not fall for that again.

"I'm not falling for that again, Harry."

The long-legged man doing _that_ did it some more. This time with open legs. John cleared his throat so sharply he got saliva in his sinuses, then sneezed so hard his ears popped.

"Go talk to him before you have an aneurysm."

"I don't want to. I mean, I don't…I'm not… And he's a… Isn't he?"

Harriet Watson blinked, blasé. "A high-class rent boy? I have no clue. Maybe. Probably? I've seen others here."

"This is some fancy local you've got."

"Yeah it is. The drinks are fantastic, the girls even better, and the decor—" Here Harry raised eyebrows toward the reclining man. "—leaves very little to be desired."

Ha. John Watson was not going to be _fished_ thank you very much, so he didn't respond to this, his sister's eighth attempt today to get him to admit he may, just may, probably does, definitely absolutely sometimes does notice _men._ Especially pretty men on chaise lounges with their legs open and pink socks on and slicked back hair and were those gold-tipped Oxfords or—

Harry shouldered John in the back. He tripped forward and was about to whine his petulance at her—which Captain John Watson does _not_ do ever anywhere, but this is _another_ thing Harry brings out in him, along with too many inconvenient truths—when the man with the thighs that _were not together_ looked right at him.

And didn't look away. Or move. He just kept looking at John, one big hand holding the sofa, and John didn't ordinarily think thoughts like _he's so…open_ but he was and did and clearly it showed on his face because the man dipped his chin and smiled.

John was halfway across the room before he had discussed this plan with his feet and by the time he let his feet know _he wasn't technically, precisely, completely gay_ his feet had brought him to nearly within touching distance of the man.

"That's it."

John tilted his head and only _then_ realised he was, like some old codger, aiming his ear at the man to better hear him amongst the bar noise.

"Come now, don't be shy."

Well the aiming thing _worked_ because John heard that deep-voiced purr loud and clear and that made heat rise, incandescent, up his neck and down between his legs.

Then the man held out his hand. John blinked at it a few times as if near-sighted and then the good doctor took it. Didn't even discuss the matter with his own hand, just _took_ it.

The man grinned up at John and said, "I'm Sherlock."

"You're beautiful." John replied, flushing scarlet, betrayed by his mutinous mouth. Apparently his whole body was going over to the other side. As if no one had ever told _this_ man he was gorgeous. (No one ever had.)

Sherlock's gaze slicked past John. His grin faded. He went dead-eyed. He dropped John's hand, stood, and walked away.

Jaw unhinged, the good doctor Watson turned and watched the pretty, maybe-prostitute sidle up to an elegant, bearded man in a perfectly-tailored suit. They talked briefly and then, his hand pressed to the small of Sherlock's back, they walked together out the door.

Right about then John Watson contemplated bursting into flames of annoyance and embarrassment. _This,_ however, was apparently where his willful body drew the line. He remained resolutely unsinged.

And then Harry was there, handing him a double of something brown and expensive and exactly one hour later Harry was chatting someone up at the bar, and John was drunk, slouched in a back booth, and—

"Well hello again you gorgeous little shit."

The man in the expensive suit with the pink socks and slick-backed hair was standing beside the good doctor's table.

John rose, swayed, then stilled himself with an index finger to the tall man's chest. "Imagine I said that without shouting. Or swearing. Or calling you…" John looked to the left, as if the word he needed was—

"Gorgeous!"

Sherlock Holmes smiled. "That just leaves 'little.'

John looked up and up and was busy not discussing things with his nose now, because he sniffed loudly, then giggled and said, "You smell like _excitement."_

Can you know the moment your life changes? Can you? Because right then Sherlock knew, he absolutely knew.

"He was jealous of you. The informant. He wouldn't show himself and then…you touched me."

John was drunk, drunk, drunk. But somewhere deep inside John Watson was quite sober, somewhere that mattered. So he whispered back, very carefully, very sweet. "Imagine I said that other part. The nice part. Let's leave that in, all right?"

Sherlock's grin grew. "What," he said, on this the first day of his new life, "is your name?"

_Redscudery said high class escort and sent[this image](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/84124640259/escort-youre-still-looking-im-not) and though I didn't take the story quite as far as you requested, I hope you like it Redscudery!_


	28. A Shot in the Arm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Right about this point John should have tugged his shirt back up, hidden his scars away again, but he didn't. And that? That more than anything is what changed everything.

"Please god, let me live."

Sherlock Holmes didn't mean to snort derisively, but that snuff of air drawn sharply _in?_ Derisive.

"Mr. Holmes?"

As they'd been doing for the last hour, everyone in the therapy group turned toward Sherlock. The newest in their small group of five, most kind of welcomed his annoying interruptions. Because sometimes you lose patience with your own misery, and foisting your pique onto an irritating stranger? It does make for a nice change.

Sherlock blinked at the therapist and this time didn't say _oh, by the way Mr. Weepy over there is also a kleptomaniac._ No, Sherlock held his deductive tongue about the failings of his fellow therapy participants. _This_ time. Instead he just blinked and waited for the therapist's inevitable follow-up question (even her statements had rising inflection).

"What did you want to say to Yvonne?"

Sherlock huffed out the breath he'd so recently snuffed in. He smiled ingratiatingly and replied, "Use your imagination?"

John Watson is an exceedingly patient man. John's seriously, bloody well, off-the-mother-fucking charts patient. But— "That's god damn _it."_

John rose so sharply his chair skidded backward. As if on a string Sherlock stood, too. Five other sets of eyes went wide.

"Apologise you arrogant shit."

Sherlock grinned, like a child given a sweet.

"I mean it mate, you tell her you're sorry or…" John closed his eyes, counted to five, unfisted his hands. Unfortunately these did not help, no matter how often the therapist said they would. "…or I'll tell everyone what you're so afraid of."

Sherlock slow blinked, flipped up his coat collar, shoved hands in pockets, a six foot wall. "That would be tremendously ambitious of you, Dr. Watson."

John barked a laugh. "Yes, exactly, that's it, do you see?" More laughter but it sounded like breaking. "I'm a doctor. A nosy doctor who did something he very much shouldn't, who got so curious about the new guy, the so-smart one, the one I thought was beautiful…got so curious that I _found stuff out."_

Sherlock stood lance tall, tugged woolen armour tight, hooded eyes going hard as any helm.

"You wouldn't tell us why you're here, not last week, not the weeks before." John started unbuttoning his shirt. "I thought it must be awful, what happened to you, because you've been so awful to us."

John tugged until his scarred shoulder was bare. "For the longest minute of my life I believed in god. I prayed the same words Yvonne did, exactly the same. 'Please god, let me live.' But I'm not elegant like she is, I kept going, a babble of promises, things I would do, wrongs I would right."

Right about this point John should have tugged his shirt back up, hidden his scars away again, but he didn't. And that? That more than anything is what changed everything.

"Misery loves company," John said softly, "not because we wish one another ill, but because being sad is a lonely business."

No one, not one of them, realised John had slowly moved through their small circle and right up to Sherlock.

"You got shot, Sherlock Holmes, that's what I learned at St. Bart's when I went looking. It hurt so much, didn't it? I know it did because it says in your records that you wouldn't stop moaning about the pain, about the blood, you were babbling they said, that's the word written in the file: 'babbling.' I can see it clear as day, the bullet dug away some of that fatty bit of your shoulder and it bled so much, too much, more than you thought it could. But the worst part…as you watched the red run through your fingers you waited in that alley for the next bullet, because that's all you could do, all your body would let you do with legs gone to lead and the mercy of disassociation telling you all of it was happening to someone else."

No one, not one of them except John, realised Sherlock had moved until Sherlock almost touched—then didn't—John's bare shoulder.

"I was right. What happened to you was awful. But it didn't happen the night you were shot in the alley. It was a long time before that, when you decided you're not enough. And what you're afraid of now, more than anything, is that you'll never be enough, not for anyone, and so every day you go about the busy business of making sure that that's true."

Symbols matter, which is why humans make them, and anything can be a symbol. As a scientist Sherlock believed in formulas, but as a human being he'd just learned he believed in signs and portents, in the rightness of a man because that man bore a scar like his own. And though those scars weren't alike, not really—the bullet that got Sherlock wounded only muscle and flesh, not bone—it was still a symbol, one that meant they were alike right where it mattered.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said again and he kept saying it and they let him keep saying it and saying it until he ran out of pain to fuel him, then ran out of arrogance to protect him, until he could finally _shut up…_ and start talking.

It wasn't after that session, nor the one following that Sherlock lingered, but the time after _that_ one? That was the one where Sherlock waited patiently, so patiently outside that therapy room, and he asked John if he liked Chinese, and he told him he knew a place, a good one, he could always tell by the lower third of the door handle and…

…and John said yes, sure, and then oh really, and they went and they ate, and they talked. Oh how they talked.

_I don't know where this one came from. Sometimes you just don't._


	29. The Fiery Sword

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes wanted to be in love.
> 
> No, that's not right.
> 
> Sherlock wanted to know what being in love felt like. 
> 
> Greg Lestrade thought he'd help.

Sherlock Holmes wanted to be in love.

No, that's not right.

Sherlock wanted to know what being in love _felt_ like. He wanted to understand its darker emotions: jealousy, grief, regret. With that data he was sure he'd be a good twenty-eight to thirty percent faster at cracking the grimmer cases, the ones that hinged on love's irrational passions, its inevitable disappointments.

Yes, well.

The fly in Sherlock's analytical ointment was that people can't just decide to fall in love. Though they certainly can _try._

Greg Lestrade was patient. Greg's pretty much always patient. So he tolerated the sudden onslaught of lingering looks; the pointed, personal questions; the bizarre and random touches.

And when he finally said, "Seriously Sherlock, what the fuck?" Greg was flattered when Sherlock explained. Look, he may want to punch the man as often as praise him, but the git's good-looking, brainy, and has a certain charm if you squint hard and feign deafness.

Which is why Greg took it upon himself to set up the great Sherlock Holmes.

It did not go well.

Sherlock didn't look twice at the guy with the four science degrees. He talked over the gregarious ginger with the lisp. He actively insulted the banker and the writer, and when the coroner saw Sherlock again a week later, well frankly Lestrade's not surprised the man tried punching him. Twice.

Still, the DI does love a puzzle and so eventually there was a baker, a beekeeper (that had a promising five minutes), another coroner, and an undertaker. There was an older man, a younger woman, an older woman, twins (one of each), two detective constables, and a chemist.

Nothing.

By the time Lestrade got to the actor and the anesthesiologist there wasn't even disdain on Sherlock's part or much interest left on Greg's.

And so everything went back to normal, where normal is broadly defined as Sherlock being brilliant and annoying, Lestrade being long-suffering and grateful, and winter turning into spring turning into summer turning into a very lovely autumn evening.

"I'm off the clock Sherlock, go away."

Sherlock knew that Greg knew that Sherlock would follow him down Strutton Ground to the pub just up from the Yard. There were seven questions he still had for the DI and Greg knew that Sherlock knew that Greg would grudgingly answer them in between downing the first of Friday's pints.

"You heard the man, be a good boy and run along."

What neither Greg nor Sherlock knew was that John Watson wasn't in the mood to sit by while some bossy boy in a big coat harassed his nice downstairs neighbour.

"Or you can buy the detective inspector's next drink and socialise like a civilised person, what do you say Mr.…?"

What Sherlock Holmes said at first was nothing. And then Sherlock geared up to say a whole range of things, things that would have begun with doctor, army, and invalided, and ended with psychosomatic, oversexualised, repressed tendency toward alcoholism, and short, because when Sherlock feels stupid he opens his mouth and _he acts stupid._

Then John Watson widened his eyes at Lestrade and said, "Oh wait! Is this _that_ Sherlock? The one who figured out the imposter corgis case?"

Without waiting for a reply John rose, reached for Sherlock's hand, grinning, "Greg told me about that. Amazing. Really remarkable."

Sherlock shook John's hand. Sherlock let John buy him a beer. Sherlock answered seven questions, magnanimously coped with more praise, and looked mildly stunned. John just chatted on, progressively more animated and complimentary.

For his part Greg proceeded to stand—or rather sit—his ground like a sword-wielding angel, a fierce expression driving off Sally, Superior, Haddad, Baines, Dimmock, and even the chief superintendant when each tried joining their small band for a pint.

And Sherlock? Well he did eventually fall in love.

Though the long years would garner him the data he'd originally craved—no one is immune to grief or disappointment—it turned out that in the end Sherlock had to make do mostly with love's pleasanter aspects—contentment, lust, joy. Which was fine really. In the end it was these that made him better, much better, at what he did.

By at least a good thirty-eight to forty-two percent.

_The wonderful Chocolamousse and I were[discussing Lestrade](http://atlinmerrick.livejournal.com/78213.html?thread=4073605), who I feel is the Galahad of "Sherlock." He seems pure of heart, wishing to make the world better, and he seems to have very little ego wrapped up in doing that. If Sherlock could have decided to fall in love with someone, I think he’d have picked Greg. Fate had other ideas._


	30. The Tell-Tale Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain John Watson was always a good soldier. He knew when to follow orders. Dr. John Watson, however, knew something else entirely: sometimes seconds are all that stand between a dead hostage and a living one.

 

"Stay in the van."

Captain John Watson was always a good soldier. He knew when to follow orders.

Dr. John Watson, however, knew three entirely different things:

This slim, black sergeant was not his superior officer.

This sergeant had not made the emergency call that got him out of a warm hospital and into a minus ten degree night.

The man who _had_ called—"hurry, please please please"—was very aware that seconds are sometimes all that stand between a dead hostage and a living one.

So John Watson got out of the van.

And kind of wished he hadn't.

It started with the sergeant's complaint—"You'll only be in the way!"—it continued inside and at volume.

"Shut up, now, shut up!"

John couldn't tell who was yelling because, as the woman outside had implied, the place was crawling with cops and John was one body among far too many.

So he did one important thing: Found someone with a detective's insignia and asked, "Has the boy been found?"

The young detective frowned, wide-eyed. "There are six hundred self-storage companies in greater London. _Six hundred."_

"Oh god, he's in a storage—" John stopped talking when the detective actually looked as if he'd cry.

Instead John tucked himself into a corner of the four thousand square foot house while police continued to pour in, and he tried not to think that somewhere in London a small boy huddled in a small, freezing space, waiting, hoping.

No, instead John looked at the blond hardwood floor at his feet, and then he went Zen and started pacing along the fancy, dark inlay at its edges.

"Get out! I can't think! Get out!"

This time John saw who was yelling because the man was holding his arms out and turning in circles, very clearly clearing the space around him.

John looked back down when he reached a corner. He tapped his toe onto the pretty starburst inlay there, continued pacing.

"So help me god I'll be the one to cut out _your_ heart if you don't—Lestrade, if you want me to find the—"

John reached another corner. Tapped his toe onto another dark starburst. Watched a grey-haired man tiredly usher his crime scene crew from the room.

Quiet and a couple dozen feet from the angry man, John paced. Another corner, another tap of his toe.

And so it went for three more minutes. Then everything went to hell.

"Sherlock. Sherlock. _Sherlock."_ Lestrade stood still, so much more weary now than he was just minutes ago, his body already rounded with defeat.

The pacing man—Sherlock, apparently—stopped pacing. John continued pacing.

Sherlock turned on the DI. John turned at a corner, but first… _tap._

Sherlock stepped close to the DI. John stepped to the next corner… _starburst, tap._

Sherlock hissed, "Thirty-eight police. Thirty-eight police touching everything, papers, clothes, evidence, _the body._ You let them move the killer's corpse, Lestrade." Sherlock bent over, hands on knees. "I could have found the boy, but you let them touch _everything."_

The DI closed his eyes. "He didn't kill this one, Sherlock. The boy's still out there somewhere. We can find him."

Sherlock stumbled back, slid down the wall. "He's dead, Lestrade. Frozen to death by the time we get to him. Just…"

Pacing, tapping, pacing, tapping John hadn't noticed that the big, shouty man had shut up. John stopped pacing just short of his favourite corner. He liked this one, the corner with the crooked inlay, the strange one that didn't look like a starburst at all.

John looked up. From across the room John said, "The killer. What was his name?"

Neither the DI nor the man on the floor heard him, so _Captain_ John Watson spoke. "What was the killer's name?"

Lestrade looked up, squinted, confused. "Who're yo—"

"Tell me."

"Who—"

"This is the one who takes out the hearts while the victim's—"

"How do you know that, the public don't—"

"I'm an emergency responder, I _hear_ things. Now tell me."

"What is it?"

Both DI and doctor looked at the slumped detective, who was now no longer slumped.

"What have you noticed?"

John crossed the room, held out his hand. Sherlock reached back. John tugged the tall man tall and all three people in that massive, empty room walked across it and to John's special corner. He tapped a toe onto the crooked…not starburst.

"I thought it was an accident, that someone made a mistake. They didn't. They got it perfectly." John squatted, laid his fist over the inlay.

"Oh. _Oh._ "

John nodded. "There are none of the arteries or veins leading off, just the—"

"—left and right atrium and left and right ventricles."

Lestrade breathed shallow, said softly, "But there's no basement in this house."

Sherlock fell to his knees and banged at the floor with his fist. "There doesn't have to be."

*

Eighty seven minutes later the drugged child was removed from what would have been his tomb, three feet below that tell-tale heart.

Twelve hours later Dr. John Watson had finished giving his statement at Scotland Yard.

Twelve hours and three minutes later Sherlock Holmes appeared suddenly beside him and they both walked out the Met's double doors.

Thirteen hours later they were giggling and eating the best Chinese food that has ever been, _ever._

Two days later they were flatmates.

Two weeks later they were pretending they were still flatmates.

Three weeks later they gave that up for a bad job and went outside hand-in-hand for the first time.

Three months later the little boy—his name was Amadeo—came with his dad to 221B. Sherlock gave the child electron microscope scans of bees. John gave him one of his military medals.

A year later Dr. John Watson married Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

And for all the years after that, they lived happily ever after.

_If you like "Well Met," there are 47 new stories of how they met in mah first book! You can buy["The Day They Met"](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is) over here, if you like. Thank you._


	31. Free Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes looks up, at the man between whose thighs this beauty stands.
> 
> Again he's amazed at the size, and again Sherlock murmurs something complimentary and the blond-haired man grins wider, and says, "Would you like a ride?"

God he was big. _Really_ big.

Sherlock looks him over carefully. Fights the urge to step away. He feels sure they're not generally this…large. Or maybe they are. Frankly he hasn't ever been this close to one, or if he has he didn't really look. They've never had any relation to The Work, so why would he?

Still, now that he's up close, just about touching it, he's surprised at its delicacy, its warmth, its beauty.

Oh yes, that. That bit, there.

Sherlock's startled to find it _beautiful,_ and he rarely lets himself see that, much less say it. But he's just now spoken that word, just now touched the softness, the—

"Thank you."

Sherlock Holmes looks up, at the man between whose thighs this beauty stands. Again he's amazed at the size, and again Sherlock murmurs something complimentary and the blond-haired man grins wider, and says, "Would you like a ride?"

Sherlock can't answer for three long seconds.

Then Sherlock takes one second more to tease through the jaw-dropped reality that his throat's gone dry and he's breathing funny and… "Yes."

John Watson smiles wider, then reaches for the man's hand. He's long since learned that if he seems to need help dismounting, somehow it makes the horse less threatening.

On the ground John strokes the gelding's soft side. "Mike belongs to an old army friend of mine. Now and again I get to take him out for a bit of a bareback stroll through the park." The man smiles. "I'm John."

At Sherlock's muttered name, John grins, taps his guest's right arm. "So now, take hold of his mane here. Yes, just like that, then pull and step…yes that's good, now up you go!"

John Watson doesn't wait, simply reaches for Sherlock's hand, murmurs, "Hold tight," pulls and swings behind his guest.

"Well done. Are you ready?"

Sherlock is busy being distracted by the heat of the big animal between his legs and the heat of the small one at his back. Again John Watson doesn't wait, but squeezes the horse with his thighs and the moment Mike moves Sherlock yelps ("No I didn't," he'll say one year from today. "Yes you did." John will reply.), so John takes hold of his guest's waist.

"I've got you."

The genius who notices the furled-up edge on a plaster, the stopped watch on a wrist, the stain on the knot of a tightly-tied tie, does not for the next five minutes notice when they stop so a child can pet Mike; doesn't feel it when a low-lying branch brushes across his forehead; doesn't see the Queen's Guard contingent of twelve plumed soldiers ride by on their own fine mounts.

No, all Sherlock Holmes notices is the measured breathing behind him, the sweet smell of it (apples, the man's breath smells of summer apples), the hand gently holding him steady.

Actually he notices much more than that. The flex of hip and thigh as John guides the horse with subtle pressure. He feels the puffs of breath when the man murmurs words surely the horse can't hear and yet seems to and—like Mike—Sherlock relaxes when John reassures, "It's fine, it's good, such a good, _good_ boy."

And for the first time in Sherlock Holmes' life he deduces strange things. Things like _he would be kind; he would listen; maybe he would…_

They stop and smooth as you please the small man dismounts. Before either of them has time to school his expression to placidity Sherlock is hopefully looking down at John hopefully looking up.

Yet somehow they're about to let the moment pass, because each has been alone long enough that it's begun to seem normal, maybe safe. Then Mike makes a chest-deep sound and turns his head. It's difficult to tell which man he's looking at, but it spurs one of them to speak.

"A past client of mine works in the Shard lets me onto the observation deck whenever I like would you like?" The words fall out of Sherlock's mouth as if aided by gravity and he wonders if John, all the way down there, can see the flush he feels creeping up his neck. ("I totally did," John murmurs a month later. "Oh you did not," Sherlock whispers back.)

Still and all, John's about to say something along the lines of, "Thanks a lot but no…" because John's still not ready to acknowledge certain personal things, but you know what? Mike has pretty much had it.

The horse, who is exceedingly fond of apples, lowers his head and noses at John. He does not, however, press his velvet against the pocket in which John still has a half dozen succulent slices. He presses it between John's legs.

It is at this time that both men drop their gazes. It is at this time both become acutely aware that neither of them is, well, _gelded._

John clears his throat. John clears his throat a second time. Still and all his voice is a bit croaky when he reaches a hand up to Sherlock and says, "Let's keep riding awhile."

Quickly they again settle one behind the other. For a long time neither is aware of much but the other's breathing, of murmured words, low laughs. For a long time they completely forget to guide the horse.

It's fine, it's all fine. Gentle and steady Mike takes them through dappled light. He's got them. Mike's a good boy. A good, _good_ boy. And he's got them.

_LeMisanthrope wanted John on horseback. I wanted innuendo, a bit more innuendo, and then true love. Thank you LeMisanthrope!_


	32. Up To Speed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you blind? You're not even trying and—there, him, the blond? He's attempted to catch your eye half the night. And that woman? Her military kink's nearly as big as she hopes your—"
> 
> "Okay, yes, thank you for that, Poirot."

The woman by the pillar, the one who keeps thumbing at her bare ring finger? Adulterer.

The guy hovering near the exit, pressing at his belly? Delicate constitution, recently vomited.

Oh, and the big man standing motionless in the middle of the room? Gaze judgmental and posture imperious? Not one hot _clue_ what he's doing here.

John Watson chuffs out a laugh. Yeah, it's easy to read people at these things. Then again, that's probably the point. Here men and women are stripped to their basics, artifice almost impossible to maintain as they try speed dating their way to love.

Then again, what does John know?

The only dating the unemployed doctor's done lately is _intimi_ dating. With a smile, a nod, and hands clasped behind his back, the ex-soldier wanders the outskirts of these weekly events, unassuming, unthreatening, and ready to take down the _next_ coked-out Whitehall arse who decides to flip tables after finding out no one offered their phone number.

The beauty of the gig is that it's well-paid, a few times a month, and John's pretty sure he's getting pretty good at reading people. It should come in handy when he starts dating again. _If_ he starts dating again.

John finds one of his edges occupied by tall shadow. "Take off the coat," he says. Realising it sounds like a command, John grins to show it's not. "It'll make you look more approachable."

The big man turns his head, looks down at John. Not content with judgmental and imperious, he tacks on annoyed and rude. "Yes, I can see you're quite skilled at turning heads."

John's heard just about everything at these events. From toe-curling lies to heart-palpitating candour, he's watched lonely people move from table to table, trying to change their voices, their expressions, their _truths_ as they move. He's learned that arrogance and anger often mask need and pain.

"You're right, my pulling days seem long gone."

Sherlock looks back into the room but suddenly doesn't see the people. He's not used to…. _agreeable_ agreement. And before he thinks about what to say he's saying it.

"Are you blind? You're not even trying and—there, him, the blond? He's attempted to catch your eye half the night. And that woman? Her military kink's nearly as big as she hopes your—"

"Okay, yes, thank you for that, Poirot."

"Sherlock."

John looks away from the blond man who, yes, was openly staring now.

"Sorry, what?"

"My name. You called me—"

"Right, uh, hello Sherlock." John averts his gaze from the woman who, yes, has dropped _hers_ right down to his— "Uh, I'm John."

Always at a loss over _pleasant_ pleasantries, Sherlock gestures with his chin at a lean woman in an expensive suit. "Financier. She's pretending each person is a possible stock pick."

A delighted giggle escapes John before he can think about it.

Sherlock grins before _he_ can think about it, looks to a dark man well into his 60s. "He's been to three hundred and twelve speed dating events."

John tips briefly sideways, gently shoving Sherlock with his shoulder. "Oh go on."

Sherlock stutters to brief silence, then: "Um…that one? She's married, engaged, dating, _and_ gay."

John snorts inelegantly. "Oh stop."

Sherlock stops.

John shoves him with his shoulder. "All of that can't be true. No one's—what's wrong?"

Sherlock opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head, "Nothing."

John starts walking the perimetre of the room, Sherlock follows. Once they're on the other side, John stops, points with his chin and whispers. "How about her?"

Sherlock looks at the woman. "Husband passed away last year. Doesn't want to date but she's lonely."

This time Sherlock's waiting for it, and sure enough, John shoves him with a shoulder again, only lighter…and for longer. Eventually Sherlock says, "Did I pass?"

John looks up. "What?"

Sherlock nods toward the woman. "You know her."

John seems to think about his answer, then shrugs. "Sorry. I didn't mean to test you." Before Sherlock can say anything, John does. "Okay, I did. But I have one more."

Sherlock narrows his eyes and finds he's waiting for another shove of that sturdy shoulder. Instead John points with his chin again, and says, "That man there. What can you tell me about him?"

Sherlock contemplates saying the thing he wants to say but he doesn't know how to say, so instead he does what he always does: He goes for what's easy. Turning toward where John's looking, Sherlock prepares to say what he sees.

What he sees is John's reflection in a nearby mirror. John's smiling, small and expectant.

Sherlock opens his mouth, closes it, then, eyes still trained on John's reflection, Sherlock says softly, "That man is lonely. He feels invisible. He tries too hard. But it doesn't make any difference. He's still invisible."

Sherlock starts to count. The inevitable 'piss off' will come in _five, four, three…_

John stays still, his reflected gaze keen. "Which one of those men are you talking about?"

Sherlock's gaze shifts and he realises that they're both reflected in the mirror.

Instead of answering, Sherlock awkwardly shoves John with his shoulder, asks, "Who's Poirot?"

John grins, starts pacing the room again, Sherlock beside him. Neither man right then think of the next few hours as their first date, but as the good doctor brings Sherlock Holmes up to speed on old-fashioned detectives, that's what it is, oh yes indeed.

_So, Shaindy thought they might meet at a speed dating event, where Sherlock would deduce everyone. I wanted John to do some of the deducing though, too. Thank you Shaindy!_


	33. Hot Seat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In that narrow aisle Sherlock did what Sherlock does: Exactly what he wanted.
> 
> And what he wanted was to stare down at his sandy-haired seat mate and flick-flick-flick past the obvious—military, doctor, alone—to observe the less obvious: This small, silent man thrived under fire. Oh how interesting.

"We start in five minutes! Sit wherever you like! Enjoy the talk!"

Sherlock ignored the perky constable, took his seminar ticket, glanced at it. _Homicide in the Capital: London as Battlefield_ was done up in a festive, gory red.

Sherlock pushed into the auditorium. Scowled. Humans milling everywhere. Almost every seat taken. And people were _talking_ to each other.

Uncaring that the incoming crowd had to sluice around him, Sherlock Holmes stood in that doorway and _flick-flick-flicked_  his gaze over the audience.

_His foot hurts. He's going to tell me about it._

_She's already chatting up the man two seats over._

_He's been stood up by his boyfriend again and wants a shoulder to cry on._

That cloud gaze scudded fast over faces, deducing, judging— _too much, too much, too much…ah._

_There._

Compact. Arms and legs held close. Flyer folded neatly on his lap. Not fidgeting, not looking around, not doing anything but sitting quiet, focused, inward.

Pushing his bulky body—they'd tried to get him to check his coat—through the crowd, then past a dozen sets of knees, Sherlock at last arrived beside his seat mate.

And didn't sit.

No, in that narrow aisle Sherlock did what Sherlock does: Exactly what he wanted. And what he wanted was to stare down at his sandy-haired seat mate and flick-flick-flick past the obvious—military, doctor, alone—to observe the less obvious: This small, silent man thrived under fire. Under metaphorical fire, under literal fire, under battlefield conditions that threatened soul and safety.

_Oh how interesting._

With a dramatic coat-tail flourish, Sherlock sat beside the intriguing stranger and said, "Of course they think they know."

John Watson heard but did not listen. He didn't know a soul at this seminar. No one could possibly be talking to him.

"But they really don't."

John glanced at the big man next to him. Then at the man beside _him._ Nope, it didn't look as if the big guy was talking to _that_ guy. That guy was texting like a tweener.

Finally John looked up, into sort-of blue eyes. "Beg pardon?"

Sherlock sighed, as if at the end of an exhaustive lecture. "They put together profiles, perform case studies, but of course they don't know because they don't see."

For some reason John checked that other guy again but he was still texting, so clearly this curly-headed stranger was addressing _him._ "I'm sorry, have we m—"

"See? There?" Sherlock pointed. "The lecturer. His posture, that chin-down gaze, the hands clenched tight behind his back? He's recently entered into a sexually satisfying relationship. Finally getting all those submissive tendencies tended to. But he's worried his ex-partner will find out…she's the director over there, trying to figure out what's different about him."

John Watson glanced at the woman on his other side, crossed his legs, stared straight ahead.

"Pressure's her thing. Dom, sub, oh that's for confused children. But a deadline, a ticking clock, the need to hurry, to do it now or not do it? That's what gets her going."

John Watson stopped facing forward, looked at Mr. Chatterbox. "Why are you—"

"All of them, they look for clues where there are none, and so look right past the clues already there. No wonder they can't catch criminals. _Or_ have satisfactory sex."

John leaned away, to make room for his incredulity, and said, "Who the hell _are_ you?"

Sherlock grinned. "I'm Sherlock Holmes. I'm the man who's about to make your life a lot more interesting."

John Watson tilted his head. Then slowly tilted it in the other direction. He said precisely nothing. But his smile? Oh that said exactly this: _I dare you._

Sherlock smiled right back. Accepting that wordless challenge, he stood, stepped up onto his own seat, then armrest-walked a dozen rows down, until he at last jumped onto the raised stage.

This behaviour of course drew most eyes. When Sherlock began shouting about evidence—the phrases diamond-embedded false eye, conjunctiva, and _youthoughtnoonewouldnotice_ featured prominently—even the texting man looked up.

When Sherlock pointed right at John, intoning, "—and my colleague can prove it," John _almost_ turned in his seat to look behind him. Then, completely understanding that the parametres of his life had irrevocably changed, John Watson stood and, with nineteenth century manners, murmured his _excuse mes_ all the way to the end of the aisle, then the good doctor joined Sherlock on the stage before he'd even asked himself why.

Three hours and four times that many giggling fits later, John said, "—and you're just lucky I backed you up when it was the man's _other_ eye that popped out!"

Sherlock grinned down into his plum wine. He was pretty sure he adored plum wine. Plum wine intrigued him. Plum wine excited him. Plum wine was interesting and tiny and stroppy and made him want to…made him want to…made him _want._

"I want some," John Watson laughed low, holding Sherlock's eye. Then, eventually, tilting toward him a tiny, empty glass.

Sherlock grinned wider. He poured his tablemate some very good plum wine. And flick-flick-flick, his gaze meeting the gaze of a man who reflected back to him _brilliant, amazing…_ well Sherlock Holmes understood that everything? Everything had changed.

Which was _brilliant._

 _After recently watching people file into a small theatre for a talk, I thought 'Sherlock would probably hate this, trapped so close to someone who might_ yammer.' _And then I realised that of course it would be_ Sherlock _who wouldn't keep his mouth up. Of course not. I've never, ever believed that silly BBC line, "Sometimes I don't talk for days." Liar. P.S. Yes, I promised "Keeping It Loki," but after last week when I lost out on_ three _jobs—hence the rattling of my tin comment cup—this week I was offered two_ and _got a freelance gig so...hopefully Monday but mostly likely Thursday for Mr. Glorious Purpose._


	34. Fan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are six regular posters to The Science of Deduction forum. Most leave comments nitpicking Sherlock's methods or conclusions, his morals or his manners. Of course Sherlock replies to these. In detail. The day they're posted.
> 
> But John Watson's praise? To that Sherlock has not responded once.

_That's brilliant._

Sherlock Holmes ignores John Watson's first comment on his blog.

_Amazing._

And his second.

_That's incredible. Remarkable. Extraordinary._

And his third. Fourth. Fifth.

There are six regular posters to _The Science of Deduction_ forum. Most leave comments nitpicking Sherlock's methods or conclusions, his morals or his manners. Of course Sherlock replies to these. In detail. The day they're posted. But John Watson's praise? To that Sherlock has not responded once.

_Those symptoms may also point to macular degeneration._

Then John Watson starts answering questions Sherlock hasn't asked.

_If the wound was bleeding, it could be skin cancer._

Sherlock ignores these comments, too. Then John Watson says something Sherlock can't ignore.

_I had a patient allergic to blue. Well, to the chemicals that make blue food colouring. Maybe the little girl reacted to the punch at the birthday party?_

Sherlock reads those two dozen words a half dozen times, snaps his laptop closed, texts the tech who'd done the tox screen on the dead child. The next day the father is cleared of the poisoning charge.

The day after that Sherlock starts to reply to John's comment with a thank you. Then Sherlock deletes it. Instead he types out a terse: _It_ was _indeed_ _the dye._

Turns out Sherlock's hunch is right. Giving not very much is just enough.

Just enough so that John Watson still says very little. An occasional (unbelievable) bit of praise, then the rarer words that lead Sherlock down a deduction path he hadn't thought to go.

It's after Sherlock's fourth terse acknowledgement to the doctor— _the CEO did have Factor V Leiden—_ that the exchange begins.

The man calls himself Mr. DangerMouse, for god's sake, and each time Sherlock concedes John got something right, DangerMouse leaves a message telling John he's 'amazing,' 'smart,' or 'incredible.'

And almost immediately John Watson responds. And responds. And _responds._

The two start…something…in those comments. Sherlock pretends he's ignoring it. Pretends he always checks his comments twice an hour. He pretends he doesn't look up "that funky cafe near Waterloo station; you know, the one with the French clock outside?" And he pretends a case brought him to that same cafe the day the two men meet.

Sherlock doesn't pretend his instant dislike of DangerMouse, who's arrived early, just as he has.

"You're not employed. Or actually interested in John Watson, are you Mr. _Mouse?"_

The seated man looks up. His fixed smile falters. Then falls away.

"Oh, is this the famous detective, _detecting?"_ The words come with a sneer, then the man remembers himself, smiles with his eyes but not his mouth. "Uh, sorry. You surprised me. How do you do Mr. Holmes?" The man stands, offers his hand.

Mr. Holmes does not take it.

"You chatted up the barista for five minutes, then pretended you'd forgot your wallet—it's bulging right there in your back pocket—until she gave you your coffee and cake for free."

With effort the man does not reach for his wallet.

"You should have removed your wedding ring sooner."

With effort the man does not run his thumb over the fading indent in his finger.

"John Watson's dieting. And prefers chocolate to caramels."

The man frowns at the box of sweets on the table, as if someone else brought them.

"He played rugby in college, not football, was in the army not the navy, and he's far too smart not to see through your plans of fraud. So those index cards you've been studying? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong."

DangerMouse's false smile is long since gone. "Good god, it's true what they say. You really are a dic—"

"Hello."

Both men turn. One pales, the other flushes. The pale one stares a long surprised moment at John Watson, then at the caramels, then at Sherlock. He does these things twice before finally mumbling, "I have to…I just remembered…I'm really sorry."

And with that Mr. Bromley Brown Mousterian exits stage left.

The man who remains, the one with the faint flush, looks at John Watson and realises three things. John Watson has been here the whole time. He's heard everything. And certainly he thinks Sherlock Holmes is a dick.

As if in immediate proof John Watson frowns, sighs. Then with a rueful smile he presses a palm to his belly. "You deduced about the diet, didn't you?"

It takes Sherlock three seconds to realise John is waiting for an answer. Sherlock nods.

John's face blooms slow with a grin. "Amazing."

Sherlock's eyebrows rise.

"About the rugby too."

It only takes Sherlock two seconds this time. He nods again.

"Brilliant."

Tentatively Sherlock smiles back.

"The army as well, I never mentioned that on your blog."

Sherlock's ready now, would be on tip-toe, rising to meet the next word, if he weren't purposely keeping himself still. "Yes," he murmurs.

John leans forward and whispers, "Incredible."

Sherlock's never understood the rare commenters who wander briefly onto his blog praising him, calling themselves 'fans.' He always ignores them, certain that hidden in their words are jokes in which he is the punchline.

Then one day, about three months ago, a man appeared there and he acted like those others, the ones Sherlock ignores. And then he did more. He…helped. He asked for nothing back, not Sherlock's acknowledgement, not his praise, and not his dignity.

And somewhere in those months between then and now Sherlock Holmes became something he would never stop being: He became John Watson's biggest fan.

"Coffee?" Mr. Watson finally asks.

"Yes please," smiles Mr. Holmes.

Six hours later the barista goes about the business of closing the shop up around them. She brings them a bit of cake first. They try to pay. She doesn't let them.

_This was inspired by Mithen, who wanted the boys to meet online, then by Palaserece who wondered if they could meet when John was in danger (though admittedly the danger here was entirely emotional). Thank you both!_


	35. Wingman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg squints owlishly at the dance floor. He breaks into a cold sweat. "Dance? With you? I'm…we're…"
> 
> Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Never mind."
> 
> Sherlock disappears. Greg slumps forward, under the illusion he's had a narrow escape...

"She wants to dance with you."

Sherlock Holmes' eyes dart from the woman's frothy hair to her heels. "She's coiffed to perfection and her shoes are inopportune for dancing."

Detective inspector Gregory Lestrade tugs at his bow-tie and giggles into his wine. _Coiffed to perfection._ _Inopportune._ He wonders if he can get Sherlock to say any other silly phrases.

"Yes, well she still wants to dance with you. You can tell by the little swaying motions and the fact that she _just waved you over."_

Sherlock makes a hurumphing noise and turns up his suit collar, the very opposite of a peacock display of welcome. Unlike a clueless consulting detective, the woman reads the sign loud and clear. With a tip of her glass and a grin she's gone.

"Do you know who that was? That was the Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Kicking Your Arse. She could've probably made you illegal. Just say no with a nod next time."

Sherlock opens his mouth to relay what he thinks of shadows and justices when Greg, tipsy and happy about it, talks right over him, "Now see here, I didn't ask to come to your brother's black-tie embassy do. _You_ asked me to come so I could be your wingman and…and…" Greg remembers exactly what Sherlock had said, but he wants to make him say it again.

"Teach me contemporary mating mores?"

Greg giggles into his glass again. _Who on earth talks like that?_ "Right. That. For a _case_ you said. Yes, well just remember, you did the asking and in the goodness of my tired heart I did the yessing. Now stop arguing each time I teach. And fetch me some more of this delightful wine."

Sherlock looks over the well-dressed bureaucrats in their fancy clothes. The air reeks of politics, perfume, and ministerial intrigue. Yet the longer the music plays the happier everyone seems. Sherlock frowns, confused.

 _"Fine."_ Greg rises to fetch his own delightful wine when Sherlock asks, "What's a wingman?"

Greg sits. He meditatively licks the rim of his empty glass. "Someone who watches your back. Helps. Saves you from yourself."

Greg sighs. He's _always_ the wingman, never the bride.

Wait…

"What?"

Sherlock's standing beside the table, Greg's empty glass in his hand. "I said you should dance."

Greg squints owlishly at the dance floor. He doesn't giggle. No instead he breaks into a cold sweat. "With you? I'm…we're…"

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Never mind."

Sherlock disappears. Greg slumps forward, under the illusion he's had a narrow escape. After a few minutes Greg starts to worry he's misunderstood something important, then a short man in army dress blues approaches.

"Hi. I'm John. John Watson. May I have this dance?"

Greg looks up. Breaks into an entirely different cold sweat. He instinctively wants to decline but he's blushing too hard to remember how, so he stands. After a confusing moment involving how to step around each other, Greg follows the man to the dance floor.

The moment they start waltzing the DI wishes he hadn't drunk so much. He didn't think he was going to do anything but wear a suit and sit about telling Sherlock what to do, for once. "I'm Greg, John. Uh, no, just Greg. Lestrade. I'm Greg Lestrade."

John Watson laughs and suddenly they start moving easily, then talking easier still. After awhile everything stops being awkward.

And then everything starts being awkward.

Greg feels him before he sees him. And when he turns, what Greg sees is Mycroft Holmes looking at John. Instantly the DI feels like a dolt. A third wheel. A belly button on an angel. Any and all extraneous things. Then he realises Mycroft is asking his partner, "May I cut in?"

No one does that any more, do they? Cutting in? Except maybe a man who always carries an umbrella? Except a man whose equally stiff-backed brother says mating mores?

With a bow and smile, John Watson retires from the dance floor.

Greg, heart thrumming, a little bit giggles as Mycroft Holmes takes his hand.

* * *

Sherlock feels beneficent.

Hands shoved in coat pockets as he leaves the party, he glides toward the Shard's 62nd-floor lift. He's already phrasing his altruistic _you're welcome_ to his brother's expected _thank you._

As Sherlock boards the lift he becomes aware his departure has coincided with that of seventeen other people. All wedge themselves into the cramped space with him.

"Are you always right?"

One person in the crowd is the small, uniformed man Sherlock convinced to dance with Greg. Even with a ball-gowned woman between them Sherlock can smell the rare scotch that was the price the man asked for his matchmaking aid.

"Usually more than is socially acceptable. My brother often needs prodding."

The gowned woman and a man exit the lift. There is silence. Everyone descends a few more floors. "Why did you pick me?"

Three people get off at their floor; two glance at Sherlock.

"My name's John."

Four people glance at John.

Sherlock says nothing.

"Lieutenant John Watson."

Sherlock replies on instinct. "Captain."

John grins. "Knew it. You read rank insignia."

Sherlock's cheeks flush noticeably. He has the almost irresistible urge to cover them with his hands.

"Military kink, then?"

The lift doors open. Four people who were going to get off stay on. Sherlock's cheeks go a deeper red.

Sherlock opens his mouth to say something rude. John gets there first and says something kind.

"I was hoping to ask for a dance. You move so gracefully."

Every single one of the remaining strangers listen so carefully they're holding their breath. Sherlock's cheeks may at this point actually be on fire.

The lift doors open. No one gets off. Sherlock makes a snap decision: _He_ will get off. Yes. That's what he's going to do.

Sherlock takes one step toward the doors.

That's when eleven wingmen and wingwomen bluster and chatter and exit the lift en masse. Four spontaneously begin a conversation just outside, 'accidentally' blocking the lift doors until they close.

Close they do. Seconds pass. Then more seconds. John presses every last button on the panel. He now has forty-two floors of opportunity. He intends on using every one of them. He turns to Sherlock. "So Mister, uh…?"

Sherlock blinks. He has forgotten his own name.

John grins, lifts his arms, "May I have this dance?"

It takes a few more blinks, a glance at his own feet, then turning down his upturned collar, but finally Sherlock Holmes steps forward, and into John Watson's arms.

_In another story in this series,_ _[The Fiery Sword](http://archiveofourown.org/works/875175/chapters/3551432), so many people liked Wingman Greg that it seemed necessary we meet him again. Then Sherlock became Greg's wingman, John his own, and a group of eleven strangers, Sherlock's. It's always something._


	36. Step By Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I was invited to a friend's wedding."
> 
> The small man across from Maiko Sato Mayfair sat in his chair so stiffly he appeared bound to it.
> 
> "And he asked me to lead the waltz."
> 
> Hands and knees pressed together, John Watson's body language was not just closed, it was locked down tight.
> 
> Maiko smiled. She knew how to fix that.

"I don't really know how to dance."

Maiko Sato Mayfair Jr. (yes, a woman can be junior, something Maiko still explains with more good grace than her friends think reasonable) nodded at her prospective client.

"But I was invited to an old friend's wedding."

The small man across from Maiko sat in his chair so stiffly he appeared bound to it.

"And he asked me to lead the waltz."

Hands and knees pressed together, John Watson's body language was not just closed, it was locked down tight.

"We were good mates. Served in the army together."

Maiko Mayfair, third generation owner of Blue Crane Dance Studio, nodded sympathetically. Dance with people long enough, hold them close, your hand on their shoulder or arm or waist, and if you are quiet and attentive and very like Maiko, you'll learn to see. Observe. To hear the meaningful places where people pause. There was something her client was not saying. She patiently waited for him to say it.

"I want to do this right."

The man was breathing deeper, gearing up to fight or flee.

"They've been through so, so much. The…grooms."

John Watson looked Maiko Mayfair right in the eyes but did not see her. Instead he saw what he sees ever since being invalided home: A potential obstacle, something to push past.

Maiko Mayfair is a dancer right down to her DNA. She knows how to move. She is no one's obstacle. "How sweet your friends found one another. May I ask their names?"

John Watson blinked. Coughed on his surprise. He blinked some more, until his vision cleared and he finally saw a woman, not a wall.

This was the third studio he'd come to and he'd have gone to a fourth and a fifth until he didn't see someone slyly narrow their eyes, until he didn't notice a flaring of nostrils as if something smelled bad, until he found a place that didn't care he was the best man at the wedding of two men.

"Uh, Rémy and JJ."

Maiko grinned, leaned forward in her chair. "A waltz at a wedding, I do love them. I have just the instructor for you, John. Unique. I think you'll get along. Tomorrow, six pm?"

* * *

Sometimes John likes waiting. He can rest then. When there's nothing happening there's nothing against which to rail.

So John didn't mind that the waltz instructor was ten minutes late. Sat tight in his hardbacked chair in an empty studio, John quietly watched women and men tango in the studio across the hall. Idly he wondered what that felt like, holding a stranger so close, looking them in the eye, moving together as if you belonged.

When a flash of sequins sparked in the doorway the good doctor registered nothing more than their gleam.

Then he saw everything else.

A man. Tall. Six feet.

A man. Sloe eyed, dark haired.

A man. Dressed in a…dress. A long one of black sequins.

A man. In heels. Six inch.

A man, coming toward him, motions measured, his movement already a dance.

The man stopped a half dozen feet from John. Waited. Like Maiko Mayfair, Sherlock Holmes sees and observes. And so Sherlock waited to see what his potential client would do.

_Accept? Reject?_

John Watson held his breath. He succeeded in not looking the man up and down, in not letting his gaze roam to plunging neckline, lacquered nails, the curve-following fit of the dress.

Instead John looked the man in his pale, upswept eyes and John's body opened like a lotus blossom. His hands unclenched, his thighs eased, his lips parted.

Sherlock Holmes smiled.

_Accepted._

Sherlock introduced himself. John replied in kind. Sherlock held out a hand. John stood.

Then, without a word, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes began to move.

Dance with a man long enough, your hand on his shoulder or arm or hip and, if you're quiet like John Watson, if you're observant like Sherlock Holmes, over time you'll see things, learn things.

At that first lesson John saw Sherlock looking longer than necessary each time John stood straight-backed and not-quite-tall.

At the fourth lesson Sherlock observed that John breathed faster just before Sherlock touched him, but steadied to calmness when he did.

That eighth lesson John learned that Sherlock was inclined to ever grander words, gestures and, yes jaw-dropping dresses because he so obviously wanted-needed-yearned for John to _see_ him.

That final lesson Sherlock observed that when he told John about his war service, his sister, his wound…that John welcomed the knowledge, that it somehow made him more, not less, and so Sherlock was more. For the first time and in someone else's eyes, Sherlock was _more._

Dance with a man long enough—it may take precisely six weeks and twelve lessons—and you may learn that you can love him. And that he can love you.

And that the loving is as easy as a step taken in unison, as right as a hand on a heart.

Why it's as easy as…dancing.

_The title of this series is changing to "Well Met," as I'll soon be using "The Day They Met" elsewhere (whee!) and want to avoid confusion. My thank you to dear Black Morgan for this lovely prompt—slinky you said? sequined, plunging, patent leather?—and the perfect title. By the way, Maiko means dancing child, Sato means help. P.S. Here's an[idea of Sherlock's dress](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/98413520994/step-by-step-i-dont-really-know-how-to-dance)._


	37. Driven to Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's intention had been to finally get his driving licence because apparently, his sister said, that's what grown-ups do. But when he met his driving instructor in a mostly-empty parking lot, well John hated the man on sight.
> 
> He looked so annoyingly GQ what with that hair curling perfectly against his collar, the flawlessly pressed suit, light eyes slanting up just-so, voluptuous lips that—damn it, that's not the point. The point is...

"Release the wheel."

Knuckles white as salt, foot lead-heavy on the brake, John Hamish Watson did not release the mother-fucking wheel.

"I am not releasing the mother-fucking wheel."

The driving instructor, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, had frankly had it up to the proverbial _here_ with this man's bossy ways _._ Being as Mr. Holmes wasn't really who he was supposed to be, he couldn't actually be _fired_ from the thing he wasn't, so Sherlock Holmes vented his frustration by undoing his seat belt, reaching over, and prying his student's fingers off the steering wheel.

Sort of.

What really happened was they tussled for a good twenty seconds. There was a lot of teeth clenching and jabby fingers annoying grippy ones. Then, when he finally heard himself grunting his swears, John Watson yelled, "Fine!" and let go, and the not-really-a-driving-instructor shouted back, "Okay!" They both sat back hard with jaw muscles twitching and chests heaving and now the windows were fogged up and because Sherlock Holmes just now realised that John Watson's hair smelled really, really good and the man had very strong hands and a deep-voiced way about him when he was cursing, Sherlock sublimated a whole raft of confusing emotions by shouting, "And you failed the driving test!"

Still panting on their indignation and arousal, no one said anything at all for about one minute.

The windows got foggier.

Then John Watson's leg started to cramp. Cautiously he took his foot off the brake _of the already stalled car._ He did not reflect on the fact that this somehow caused him to again hit the car he'd already hit. He didn't think about the fact that he never even wanted to learn how to drive a mother-fucking car. He gave not one moment of thought to the fact that Harry could just get herself around town by tube as she's been doing _for all her London life,_ and setting him up "with that cutie at the bank next time since the lawyer didn't work out," was no longer going to cut it as a John-learns-to-drive bribe.

No. No. And no. What John Watson reflected on just then was that he was absolutely thrilled it was so cold that even inside the heated car he was still wearing an over-sized winter coat. A coat that just about reached his knees and so hid one mother of a surprising erection. Correction: It hid the erection that surprised him. John completed this reflection by acknowledging he hadn't intended his day to go in precisely this direction.

* * *

No, John's _intention_ had been to finally get his driving licence because apparently that's what grown-ups do, according to his sister, and so he let himself be talked into receiving driving instruction from "a place I know," and on a cold winter day he'd met his driving instructor in a mostly-empty parking lot.

He hated the man on sight.

Walking across the lot, he looked so annoyingly GQ what with that thick hair curling perfectly against his collar, suit flawlessly pressed, light eyes slanting up just-so, voluptuous lips that— _that's not the point._ The point is that John was already in a confused snit by the time the instructor held out a long-fingered hand with perfectly manicured nails, so John just cleared his throat aggressively, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, "Right. Let's get this over with."

Unperturbed, Mr. Caramel Voice introduced himself and he'd smelled so god damn _distracting_ that by the time John turned away in a huff and got in the car he forgot why he was there until he was buckling up in the _passenger_ seat for god's sake, while Mr. Pretty stood outside and gazed at him through the windscreen.

"Mother fucking fuck," John muttered, and then after a good minute and a half of getting out of each other's way they'd got themselves situated right way round and John drove an entire quarter mile around the parking lot without anything going wrong and then, for no good reason whatsoever, Mr. Perfect held his clipboard to his chest and his thighs eased open and John was so distracted he drove right up onto the nearest kerb, which was a good twenty feet away at the time.

Fast-damn-forward to John only _just_ calming down and Sherlock unsure if a case that was _maybe_ a six-and-a-half warranted the risk of permanent disability, but Sherlock was not a giver-upper about things on which he should emphatically give up, and so Sherlock used his deepest, soothingest voice to calm Mr. Sexy—uh, Mr. Stroppy down, but that just made the tiny man more sweary for some reason and so everyone shut up and got back into the car and everything was good for an entire eleven seconds while a preoccupied John drove resolutely toward a parked car.

Eleven seconds where Sherlock side-eyed his student, mesmerised by the pugnacious lift of his chin, the way his chest moved as he hyperventilated, the pretty whiteness of his bulging knuckles, and it was only when John licked his lips that Sherlock groaned and by that time they were up the back end of the battered prop car put in the parking lot for just such instructive instances as this.

"That's it," John said, jamming on the brake after the fact, muscles strung so tight Sherlock could hear the man _thrumming,_ and that's about the time Sherlock told John to remove his hands from the wheel and that's when all the tussling started and the swearing, the fogging and the failing too, and by the time John finally took his foot off the brake and the stalled car lurched and hit the other car _again,_ everyone was so overaroused there was only one thing to be done about it.

"Do you have a car?" John Watson growled at Sherlock Holmes.

"I may or may not have borrowed my brother's Bentley," Sherlock Holmes replied.

"Good. Do you know where Angelo's restaurant is?"

"I may or may not live very close to Angelo's restaurant."

"Even better. I'll buy us both enough alcohol to make the kissing we're going to do in about 60 minutes feel natural and right and not even a little bit awkward if you let me pass my driving test."

For four seconds Sherlock Holmes blinked his way through a half dozen separate trains of thought. Then he wrote _passed_ on John's form and handed it to him.

John Watson growled and ripped the form into twelve angry pieces, threw those on the floor, then said "Fuck it," and leaned toward Sherlock Holmes—who was already halfway there, mouth open.

The windows got a lot foggier.

_Again, my apologies for the delay on "Keeping It Loki." I'm working hard on writing "The Day They Met," so fan fic is slow. Back in form in about six weeks. In the meantime Jaradel wanted them to meet in a 'behind-the-wheel driving class.' Apparently John drives angry. I think we'll all agree it's good he doesn't have a licence._


	38. Yeah, He's Always Like That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John looked the tall, pretty bloke over slowly, grinned, licked his lips. "My very ex-girlfriend."

"Mike?"

Michael Heston Stamford frowned at his own fast-walking feet. He was two weeks late this time. _Two._ Last time he'd got the kids' essays back just six days after deadline and that was bad enough, now he'd gone and doubled his record for all-time worst tutor in the history of—

"Mike Stamford?"

Mike stopped frowning, looked up, squinted at a limping man coming around the park's splashing fountain.

"Sherlock," said the man, pointing to his own chest. "You helped me with the tox during the McCann poisonings."

"Oh right, Sherlock Holmes!" Mike grinned, glanced down reflexively.

Sherlock scowled at the walking stick in his hand. "Tripped in an alley behind the Savoy. Caught the arsonist though."

Mike laughed, led them both to a bench. "Getting a lot of cases then?"

Sherlock's stiff-backed silence said more than words. Mike chuffed out a breath, nodded at nothing. "Well it was good, the McCann case. Everyone at Bart's was glad to help. _I_ was glad."

Sherlock said more nothing.

"Did she…the poisoner…?"

"Yes. Prison. Twenty-three years."

"Wow, that's great."

Mike nodded, reflected that it was odd to say 'great' when talking about a killer, but that was Sherlock Holmes for you. He hadn't known the man long, but the poisoning case had gone on for weeks and they'd ended up sitting around a lab, talking into a few long nights, waiting for test results. He was a rare bird, this Holmes, a good heart in there, underneath the scowling armour.

Sherlock stood, leaned heavily on his stick. He was frowning at the fountain and Mike was no fool, he knew there was something the man was trying to say.

"What do you—"

"Mike, I need—"

They both stopped. Then Mike stood, winked at Sherlock, and started walking. "Let's get a coffee."

Sherlock frowned at the fountain harder. Then Sherlock followed.

* * *

"Mike, can I borrow your stethoscope?"

Stamford stopped next to a St. Bart's cafeteria table, arms crossed. "And what's wrong with yours, Dr. Watson?"

John Watson put his actually-pretty-good hospital coffee down, grinned up, "Abby peed on mine."

"Again? Your girlfriend's a menace."

A man limped up beside Mike. "Your girlfriend urinated on your stethoscope?"

John looked the tall, pretty bloke over slowly, grinned, licked his lips. "My very _ex-_ girlfriend."

Mike laughed. "His ex-girlfriend's _dog._ Of which she's got five. One pees on everything—that'd be Abby—one chews everything, that'd—"

"She's a vet, Mike." John gave Sherlock a leisurely once over again. "And you're a…?"

"Oh, right." Mike gestured as they sat. "John Watson, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock's a detective. Looking for a flat share. Since we were just talking about that this morning I thought I'd bring him by."

"Well lucky me," This time John's grin showed teeth. "I'm thinking of a place in central London. Got a great deal on it because the landlady's daughter is an old army mate of mine. Sound good?"

Sherlock pretended a disinterest he didn't feel. Central London would put him much closer to Scotland Yard than Mycroft's ridiculous Kew Gardens 'bungalow,' and he'd stop feeling like he owed his brother something. Before Sherlock could drop his indifference in the form of a flood of questions, the cocky little doctor continued.

"Mind you I do a lot of locum work on the side, so I keep odd hours. I like a pint now and again, too. And I do date a fair bit." John took the stethoscope Mike had finally dug from his cavernous bag, donned it in a way that could only be described as _show-offy_. Then with no coyness whatsoever he leaned over, pressed it to Sherlock's chest and listened carefully.

After a few long moments John looked up through eyelashes and "Hmmm"ed.

Sherlock blinked down as the good doctor moved the stethoscope slowly lower, making more inquisitive noises. Finally, with a lick of the lips, John sat up, looked at Stamford. "Just as I thought."

Mike rolled his eyes; he'd seen this flirty performance before. Sherlock narrowed his; he had not.

"What?"

"Time Lord."

Sherlock frowned, clueless. Mike grinned. "He's not that type of guy, John."

Dr. Watson widened his eyes, scandalised. "Michael Heston Stamford, where did you find this man?"

"I was in Russell Square with—"

"—because Mr. Holmes, you may be the only living Englishman who doesn't know what a Time Lord is. I'm really going to have to rectify that." John stood, draped the stethoscope over his shoulders, then rested a hand on Sherlock's, gave it a squeeze. "I may have to, uh, rectify a lot of things."

Stamford covered his eyes with his hands, which did nothing to hide his laughter-shaking shoulders.

"See you at seven. Mike'll bring you round?" Mike nodded and with that John Watson swaggered away. Sherlock blinked, jaw slightly unhinged. He had the distinct feeling he'd been standing in a very small, very sexy hurricane.

He blinked at Mike. Mike grinned at him. "Yeah, he's always like that."

When they arrived at seven sharp, John asked the good doctor to stay for a cuppa, but Michael Stamford's no fool. He doesn't need a stethoscope to know when two hearts are beating fast.

Besides, Mike still had some papers to mark.

 _Remember just outside 221B, in 'Scandal in Belgravia', when John hits_ hard _on Irene's assistant within two seconds of laying eyes on her? Yeah. That unsubtle John inspired_ this _one. ADDED: My word, comment-wise this might be the most popular of this series, thank you! Very good to know sassy, forward John appeals so much..._


	39. Sholmes, Herlock Sholmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes was plastered to his eyeballs—if he'd tried to do any of this flirting thing sober he'd have been dead from a panic attack or frustration—so right now he was happily hammered and metaphorically frolicking naked through a field, not one single inhibited bone in his body.
> 
> "You fancy me and I fancy you and people who fancy each other do the kissing thing..."

"I'm Herlock Sholmes."

The tall, drunk man smiled benignly at the small sober man in front of him. And then the tall man held up a staying finger, as if the small man had interrupted him. "Wait. That's not right."

The small man, Dr. John Watson, glanced around the hotel banquet room suspiciously.

By the punch bowl Gregory Lestrade was deep in conversation with a St. Bart's toxicologist. Off under one of the ridiculously bright lights Bengamen Haddad was showing off the ring his wife had bought him for his birthday. And Dimmock—John still didn't know the man's Christian name—was sidling up to the buffet and pretending this was not his fourth go at the Christmas biscuits.

Not one of the people John looked at were looking at him in a _ha-ha-we-sent-the-drunk-guy-over-as-a-joke_ sort of way, so John looked back to the tall, drunk guy, who still held a long finger aloft. "I'm…Shhhhhhh..."

John knew only one other person in this celebratory room of one hundred: Detective constable Grace Superior.

"… _it._ I don't remember."

John looked around for the DC and then yes, there she was, all six feet of her by the sparkly Christmas tree, meeting John's gaze.

"But! I do remember that I have an international reputation," intoned the man, swaying serenely.

Suddenly Grace grinned lopsidedly, made a small double-handed _go get him_ gesture at John, then disappeared into the crowd.

"Do _you_ have an international reputation?" The tall man squinted owlishly at John, as if expecting an actual answer.

John had no actual answer to give and so he gave none. That was apparently fine by the drunk guy, who suddenly shouted, "I know, I'm Herlock Sholmes!" The outburst caused the man to sway again, this time with less serenity. He employed the wall to help the room stop spinning. "No, wait."

John was about to say something when the man pointed behind him and precisely at Grace. "DC Superior, the very tall black woman who you—"

John nodded, "I know who she is."

"That's good because I did not." Very casually Sherlock placed another palm on the wall, being as the first one hadn't quite done the job. Despite both of these he still listed sideways. " _Anyway,_ she told me to come talk to you." Sherlock took a deep breath…held it…held it… "Deductions! I deduce things! And I deduced that you fancy me!"

Of the one hundred and three people currently present at the Met's Christmas party, forty-seven turned toward the shouting. After nothing happened for ten seconds except more owlish squinting on Sherlock's part and the fading of a blush on John's, most of them turned away.

That was precisely when John took Sherlock's wrist and tugged him from the hotel banquet room, down the hall, down another hall, and then randomly through the first unlocked door he found.

Once inside the dark, small conference room he started to try and say something but Herlo—Sherlock Holmes beat him to it.

"You can kiss me now."

John opened his mouth in a hint of a suggestion of a promise of kissing but he did not actually kiss. "Excuse me?"

Sherlock was plastered to his eyeballs—if he'd tried to do any of this flirting thing sober he'd have been dead from a panic attack or frustration—so right now he was happily hammered and metaphorically frolicking naked through a field, not one single inhibited bone in his body.

"You fancy me and I fancy you and people who fancy each other do the kissing thing and other things and so let's do those things."

Again John opened his mouth in a hint of a suggestion blah blah blah. _"You?_ Fancy _me?"_

"I almost never drink."

John didn't know what to do with this information.

"I don't know what to do with that information."

It was right then that the earth moved for Sherlock.

He frowned, pretty sure that that was only supposed to happen after kissing things and other things. Then he remembered he was drunk and therefore probably listing to the left again and so he took hold of the wall very casually with both hands.

"I have appeared at five of Scotland Yard's pub quizzes in the last two months pretending I needed to talk to Lestrade or Dimmock or your girlfriend that you were clearly mentally cheating on—"

John opened his mouth to say something but what Sherlock had said was a little bit true so he closed it again.

"—and I did these absurd things so that I could show you how smart I am. On Guy Fawkes night the only reason I showed up at the Yard's bonfire thing was so I could show you that I could make a bigger more burny bonfire."

John opened his mouth, though not to say anything, mostly just to breathe.

"But despite these peacock displays you appeared unmoved. Eventually your ex-girlfriend—who, by the way, is smarter than half the Yard put together but that's not saying a lot except it is—told me that I should just tell you that I fancy you."

John closed his mouth because all the breathing he was doing was making him light-headed.

"That turned out to be harder than I'd anticipated, which was why I came to this very boring party—although I figured out who's leaking all the best bits of ongoing cases to the press—and got extremely drunk. So. There. Now you can kiss me. Which means you put _that—"_

Sherlock touched John's mouth.

"—right here." Sherlock then opened his mouth and sort of dragged his finger down his own bottom lip.

The whole speech, the touch, the long finger kind of hanging off the end of Sherlock's open mouth, all combined to keep John mute. Fortunately his throat had no such confusion and proceeded to let loose with a small growl.

Suddenly important parts of Sherlock were very sober. The parts that allowed him to kind of throw himself at John, spin around in something of a ballet move, and drag them both down onto a conference table, where fingers clutched, mouths mashed, suited bodies started to grind.

"Dear god you're already hard," John whispered.

Sherlock panted. "Well you growled at me."

"I—I…um, wait wait wait." John suddenly stopped dry humping Sherlock. He climbed off the table. Took a step back.

It took Sherlock a good three seconds to realise any of this. When he did, he sat up and demurely placed a hand over the pretty tent in his trousers. He listed left, took hold of the table edge so as to stop listing left. "Why did you do that?"

"There's a very good reason I did that."

Another part of Sherlock Holmes was quickly becoming sober and that part was his mouth.

"Oh for god's sake don't be tiresome. You can't betray your ex-lover. Besides, if this was a betrayal to her, then you did that six weeks ago when you had your long, emotional," here Sherlock Holmes tried employing air quotes but succeeded only in poking himself in the eye, "'talk' at Starbucks."

John opened his mouth to reply but a drunken, pontificating Sherlock did not notice. (To be fair, an abstemious, pontificating Sherlock also would not notice.) "I assure you that your ex-lover does not care that you are…that you're…" Sherlock's mouth was fairly sober but the part of his brain sparsely stocked with idiom was still pretty hammered. "…snogging me."

The good detective nodded curtly, then politely burped against the back of his hand.

John tentatively opened his mouth, then waited. All Sherlock did was list left a little more. John waited a little more.

"Are you through?"

Sherlock shudder-sighed, blinked slow, and thought about that. Briefly he came to his conclusion.

"Yes."

"Good, that's good, because I'd really like to get back to the snogging, as you call it. First, I know that Grace doesn't care. Grace is the one who told you to talk to me, remember?"

Sherlock Holmes did not remember. He opened his mouth to say so but John got there first.

 _"Second,_ I would really like to get back to the, to the snogging, as you call it."

Sherlock Holmes opened his mouth again and again John jumped in, so to speak.

"Third and finally, I just need one important thing first."

Sherlock opened his mouth but John placed a single finger across it. Sherlock left his mouth open but nothing came out of it.

"For eight months Grace told me about your deductions, your mad derring-do, your demands. She told me how you just about dance around crime scenes, how you strut and cock and crow, how _brilliant_ you are. And yes, I watched you at the pub quiz nights and at the bonfire—you could have just said hello—and all that time watching you was helping me figure out something that probably I should have figured out a long time ago. Yet, despite the fact that yes, I broke up with Grace because I realised I fancy you, as evidenced by daydreams that have a dozen times left me breathlessly hard in a public place—"

For a moment it seemed that Sherlock was opening his mouth wider in preparation to say something but no, he was just opening his mouth wider so he could pant a little easier.

"—despite all of that, I realise that until nine minutes ago we had not stood within five feet of one another and, most importantly, have not been properly introduced. And no, you telling me that your name is Herlock does not quite count."

John took his finger away from Herlo—Sherlock's mouth. Automatically Sherlock reached for John's finger. He clutched that single digit in a sweaty fist ("It was not." "Yes it was. You were all nervous and turned on and _perspiring."_ "Shut up John."), shook it with the sober solemnity of a diplomat about to negotiate a disarmament treaty. "I'm Sherlock Holmes."

John Watson smiled.

"I'm John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, and I believe I'm about to crawl back on that table with you."

In lieu of a reply Sherlock Holmes lay back down and serenely opened his legs, his arms, and his mouth.

If at that instant anyone had asked John his name, he would not have been able to reply.

_There's a name for Sherlock's error in speech here—Herlock Sholmes—they're called Spoonerisms. And I'll get back to longer, chaptered stories at November's end. More "Well Met," and "Minutiae" in the meantime, thank you for your patience!_


	40. A Series of Sweet Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's brief joy at the admiration is tempered to resignation, because here it comes. After Sherlock does his Sherlock thing, he's grown used to thank yous that aren't, thank yous that ignore what he just did by asking him to do more, but that's not what he gets now.
> 
> Except he does.
> 
> John Watson leans close, whispers, "So…can you do me a favour, just a small one?"

John Watson did not pay one little never mind to the man behind the bar, because John Watson does not come into pubs to socialise. He comes into pubs to drink and while he is drinking he radiates as many prickly _leave me alone_ vibes as he can manage, and John Watson can manage a fuck ton of prickly.

So people leave him alone, he leaves them alone, and if it's a rainy Tuesday and the only bodies in the pub are himself and the barkeep, all the better.

Or it was better, it was damn brilliant for awhile, because the bartender was even more spiky than John, who had said thanks after getting his drink and had received a withering glance in reply.

John Watson, after eighteen months of being mostly-unemployed—because no one hires a surgeon with a visible, fucking tremour, and probably incipient alcoholism—yeah, after all that, John can really get behind the whole stink-eye thing.

So just as John's thinking he'll come back to this pub tomorrow, just about the time he's thinking he's found a comfortable place where he can settle in with a whisky and self-pity, well right about that bloody time the damn bartender leans on the bar, bends at the waist and he _moans,_ absolutely open-mouthed moans as if a damned chest-busting alien's about to come out of him.

John decides to ignore the man because that's what incipient alcoholics do, but the problem with incipient is it means just beginning, fledging, only _starting._ There's another part of John that's still bigger than his self-pity and that's his god damn _kindness._ John'll get muddy helping a goose get free of a piece of wire that's trapped it fast, he'll make silly faces at a weeping baby in the park when the father looks so stressed he's about to fall apart, and John'll stand up so fast to get to a hurting human being that he'll knock over his whisky, a double, no ice.

"Where does it hurt," he asks because, though he can see where it hurt—the man's fists are pressed against belly and chest—the asking helps a person focus on something _other_ than the hurt.

The bartender groans, stumble-trips away and to his knees, and he looks for all the world as if he's about to crawl under the bar and hide in shadow like a wounded cat.

Which is _exactly_ what he's about to do. Crawling to safety is what Sherlock Holmes did last month after he got hit in the head with a pipe and couldn't _see_ the killer, it's what he did when he was ten and one kid punched him so badly he couldn't breathe, it's what he will do every single time his mouth or his brain or his _existence_ puts him in danger and he can't fight back. Because Sherlock doesn't care about pride, Sherlock will hide in the dark and he'll _live_ thank you, he'll come back tomorrow or the day after and he'll see what people keep telling him isn't there, he'll _make_ them see, even if it means lead pipes or posing as a bartender in a dodgy pub or—

John Watson goes to his knees under that bar, right down there where the fetid water's collected from the broken bar sink, right there where rubbish no one ever sweeps up crusts in the corners, and with steady hands he touches the bartender's forehead, the pulse in his neck. He peels back an eyelid and John can see in those wild skittering eyes that the man wants to push him away, that he reads all the signs of John's help as potential hurt, and when the man half-succeeds, scooting backward with heels scraping against the filthy floor, John gets behind him and sits down hard, so that the man shoves himself backward and into John's open arms.

"It's going to stop hurting," John lies. "I'm going to make it stop hurting, okay, can I do that, will you let me do that?"

The man is hot and cold, sweating but John can feel it prickling his skin with goosebumps. He's still pushing, trying to crawl away from the pain but there's nowhere to go but deeper into John's arms. Wrapping one across the man's chest, dialing 999 with the other hand, John holds the man fast but the man keeps fidgeting so John keeps dropping the phone and now he's moaning in deep hurt again, so John dips his head, presses his mouth to the man's ear and murmurs low low low, "Hush, love, be still. Shhh."

Immediately the man settles.

For a long moment.

Two.

Three.

Four…and then he fidgets again and John _does_ it again, warm lips to an ear hidden beneath a sweat-damp mess of curls, "Hush, it's all right, shhhh."

But the man doesn't hush and it's not all right, not until John gets it, flash-quick and clear as day, so he presses his temple against the man's and he whispers close, so his breath is warm right on down the man's neck, "Be still little love, be still."

The man stills.

"There's a sweetheart, thank you."

Finally John gets his call through. He spends most of it barking out facts into his phone, then pausing to hum sweet things into a stranger's ear. The dispatcher's replies never stray to _did you just call me angel?_ or _are you talking to me?_ She's heard every single possible thing—yesterday a thief called to report a thief in the house he was robbing—and before a minute is up, help is dispatched.

John drops the phone, wraps his other arm around the man who has started to moan again and John whispers, "What's your name, sweetheart?"

Sherlock Holmes counts his heartbeats but he can't get past one so he counts John's words but he can't get past sweetheart, and his chest and belly and head hurt so badly and he's not sure what happens but it feels like there's lips against his other ear and oh, oh, the man has moved and _sweetheart, love, talk to me, come on angel_ are filling him up and so he stammers, "Sh-Sh-Sherlock."

"What a pretty name. It sounds like a mystery, doesn't it? Mine's John. That sounds…that sounds…hmmm…"

"S-s-sssstron—" hisses Sherlock, but he can't finish.

John holds Sherlock tighter and rocks him gently, "Tell me why you're sick sweetie, do you know? Can you tell me?"

Sherlock does tell him, but not until two hours later, in a hospital room, because help arrives then, and things move so very fast.

And then they are clock-tick slow and quiet, John sitting by Sherlock's hospital bed.

They'll release him in a couple hours, but right now he's weak but alert, getting fluids. John is asking him questions, and Sherlock is answering.

"—once I learned of Mr. Rossetti's symptoms, I suspected his wife. She dusted the pub with powdered kapok, to which a rare few are allergic. The immune response for a healthy but sensitive man would be extreme but not fatal. Chemotherapy had left Mr. Rossetti with an immune system far from strong." Sherlock shrugs. "But I had no proof. The police couldn't search without proof." Sherlock shrugs again.

It doesn't take any kind of genius to understand what Sherlock's not saying, so John says it for him. "So you exposed yourself, because you're allergic to kapok, too."

It's here Sherlock shuts down tight. He doesn't answer because he doesn't want to _be_ answered. He doesn't want to hear "Well you're an idiot," or "That was stupid." So Sherlock Holmes says nothing. John's not so reticent.

"You are…a god damn…" Sherlock's already scowling, turning to look out an over-bright window. "…genius."

John steps closer to the bed, _peers_ at Sherlock. "You knew how much it would hurt and you _let it happen."_

Sherlock turns, looks. John's smile is—Sherlock can't think of the word for it right now but he will later, he'll think of the word and that word will be _angelic—_ wide, admiring, and he says softly, as if right against Sherlock's ear, "It's against every human instinct to let ourselves be hurt, it takes so much bravery to calmly walk into that kind of suffering."

John sits down beside the bed and for a moment he reaches for Sherlock's hand and then shyly he doesn't, just rests it on the bed.

"Will you do me a favour?"

Sherlock's brief joy at the admiration is tempered to resignation. Ah, here it comes. _Go here now, look at this, what about that other case._ After Sherlock does his Sherlock _thing,_ he's grown used to thank yous that aren't, thank yous that ignore what he just did by asking him to do more, but that's not what he gets now.

Except he does.

"Just a small favour? Please?"

Sherlock's not holding John's hand, nor John his. Their hands are resting together, side by side on the bed, close enough to feel the warmth from each other's skin. Sherlock looks at their hands and says, "Yes."

The first Christmas back from Afghanistan nearly killed John. When he was still over there he'd sometimes got letters from the soldiers that had gone home, strangely short letters. All those years ago John had promised himself that when he got home he'd write long letters. He'd write great letters.

But John didn't. John doesn't. Because he learned fast that if he wrote letters to the men and women he left behind they'd contain nothing but the breathless refrain: _There's nothing to do. There is nothing for me to do here._

Yet sometimes, if a man is lucky, if a man _looks,_ he finds something to do.

"Let me help."

Sherlock blinks. "What?"

"Next time, whatever you're doing, let me help."

Sherlock shakes his head, confused. _"What?"_

"I could have helped reduce the severity of your allergic reaction…I could have helped it not hurt you so badly."

More blinking. Realisation. "Oh."

John smiles that smile again, the one Sherlock will later tell him is angelic, but right now Sherlock doesn't know how to behave around that smile, so he looks out the window again, saying, "Yes."

John looks out the window now, too. "Thank you, love. Thank you."

They both grin as if the bright, bright day is glorious.

_There shall be more of this series, I promise! In the meantime there are more stories of[The Day They Met](http://wendycfries.com/post/128280390239/ordering-the-day-they-met-the-day-they-met-is), new stories. Thank you for making these new stories possible. Your comments did that. You helped me do it. Thank you._


	41. The Birds and the Bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hearing these few highly unusual words in a sinful baritone so surprised the good doctor that he reflexively turned to gape at the man who'd purred them.
> 
> His movement was so sudden his coffee cup swirled on its saucer in a sort of ballet. John watched it in the slow-motion way of one who has enough time to realise something bad is going to happen but does not have time to stop the badness...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [other works inspired by this story please go here](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/138889209609/wait-what-could-these-bebirthday-gift-perhaps)!

"I was a queen bee," Sherlock Holmes said to the studious psychology student. And then, because he does not much truck with psychological interpretations that are not his own, he added, "I'm sure you'll say that means something important."

Three feet from Sherlock's table John Watson leaned on a cafe counter and avidly watched the barista make his mocha latte. He was not aware that his tongue stuck out, or that he was leaning forward a bit, or that he vibrated with eagerness. This would be his first mocha latte of the week. He was only allowed three. He rationed himself. He had no idea why.

While John might have been completely unaware of the location of his tongue and that it was now doing a sexy, anticipatory samba across his bottom lip, he was, peripherally, quite aware of the conversation of the two strangers just behind him and to his left.

The plainest of plain filter coffees in his hand, Sherlock Holmes blinked benignly at the psychology student, the son of the daughter of Mrs. Hudson's sister and a boy Sherlock was 'helping' by answer questions for the young man's college essay. Sherlock was not strictly doing this out of the kindness of his heart.

He was doing it because there was no case on, his mosquito larvae wouldn't hatch for another day, and the sulfur he'd ordered (for a small experiment with a very small cannon), was still in transit, so Sherlock was bored. B.o.r.e.d.

Hence a little cafe interview with a young, studious individual named Cesare.

Cesare, for his part, was not at all sure this interview was helping him with his essay. This wasn't Mr. Holmes' fault. It was because talking about sex to strangers made Cesare extremely uncomfortable, yet he didn't know how to say, "I think maybe we should stop now. I think maybe I shouldn't be a sex therapist. Also this blush I have feels like it's going to kill me."

Deducing all these things, Sherlock nevertheless sipped his lukewarm coffee and waited for follow-up questions. In front of him and to his right an expensive machine busily dripped rich espresso into a porcelain mug and a short man drummed his fingers on a cafe countertop.

While Cesare gathered his abashed thought, Sherlock decided to deduce the short, finger-drumming man with the appalling taste in coffee.

_Strong-willed. Unemployed. Craves distraction. Sublimates lack of purpose, lack of sex, and lack of anything interesting to do by purchasing the richest coffee he can think of._

Suddenly Sherlock was bored of being bored. He was bored of being inexpertly probed by a young man who only thought to become a sex therapist because he could make his girlfriend come just by talking to her and somehow they'd both thought that would be a really popular skill for a sex therapist. But that was neither here nor there.

What was here was Sherlock's craving to be not-bored. So he decided to help a boy figure out his path in life—Cesare would quit his degree next term and happily go on to be middle management at HMV—and to liven up the day of a man whose mocha latte was its high point.

So Sherlock said, "Was it enough for your essay on human sexuality? That in the first wet dream I remember I was a queen bee on her mating flight?"

John H. Watson is a war veteran, an ex-surgeon, and once chased an insurgent through a field of detonating fireworks. He is a difficult man to startle.

And yet…

Hearing these few highly unusual words in a sinful baritone so surprised the good doctor that he reflexively turned to gape at the man who'd purred them. His movement was so sudden his coffee cup swirled round and round on its saucer in a sort of ballet. John watched it do this in the slow-motion way of one who has enough time to realise something bad is going to happen but does not have time to stop the badness.

Round and round…

Sherlock made eye contact with the short man. He'd been planning on grinning smugly and saying something like, "Well he _did_ ask," with a tip of the head toward Cesare. Then Sherlock had planned to follow that up by chuckling in an appealingly genius-like way.

Round and round…

But the short man's piping-hot mocha latte at last stopped spinning and plunged to the floor—splashing smartly over both of Sherlock's seven hundred pound Tom Ford monk-strap brogues—and the contents of the saucer that had been under John's coffee cup, now ever so full of slightly-cooler latte, landed in the lap of Sherlock's Spencer Hart suit.

As if it was feeling left out, Sherlock's half-empty coffee mug tipped over for no reason whatsoever and joined the mocha latte all over everything.

John Watson could not look the coffee-drenched man in the eye for the next little bit of forever.

Yet, though he closed his eyes against the travesty before him, this did not stop John Watson from seeing everything in mind's eye. The man's pale eyes partially obscured by waves and waves of dark fringe. His long legs drawn up in coffee-splashed surprise. The frown on a face with the most fantastic cheekbones John has probably ever seen _ever._

John also closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see himself getting another thing wrong in a long list of wrong things. A list that started with the whole getting shot thing, the being invalided home thing, and the unemployable surgeon thing, and ended with John dumping caffeine all over a beautiful man, and you know what? John was done now. Just done. He was tired of things going wrong.

That was good. Because something was about to go right.

Sherlock, who in circumstances such as this would usually say something cutting because in any situation where he feels a fool Sherlock's too stupid to do anything else and yet, well, this time Sherlock did something new: He giggled. He giggled his head clean off.

He giggled at his caffeinated crotch and giggled at his mocha latte'd shoes and then he did the thing John will say was the second best thing he ever did: He looked up and he giggled _with_ John…until John started laughing, too.

Though he really didn't have the temperament for it, Cesare would have made a good therapist. Because Cesare realised something lovely was happening just then, and that something didn't include him. He also realised that if he made a break for it now, they probably wouldn't notice.

They noticed.

But John and Sherlock were polite, they waited until the boy was long gone before laughing themselves sillier still.

Then they waited until the barista was done serving two fitness teachers four espressos before asking the man for a damp cloth.

Then Sherlock waited until John had bought them both more coffee before saying, "I'm Sherlock Holmes."

Then John waited until they had been talking for a half hour, until they had made each other laugh again, and until the woman at the table behind their table had left before he finally leaned over and whispered, "Did you really have a dream where you were…you know…and then you…you know?"

It was then Sherlock did absolutely the best thing he'd ever do, according to a short speech John Watson would make at their wedding, two years from now.

He leaned toward John and Sherlock said, "I was a queen bee on her mating flight. I flew over the top of the tallest trees with just one drone. He stayed close, he fed me honey, and we danced. Then we mated for hours, rising ever higher on summer-warm air until…until we, until I…until…the dream…"

Sherlock could feel his cheeks flaring red and before he let himself notice the same flush on John's cheeks Sherlock sat up straight and, looking out the window, said, "Which was ridiculous of course. On her mating flight the queen rarely flies higher than twenty feet. She has sex with up to a dozen drones, who do not feed her honey while they mate. After he has sex with the queen, the drone's penis is ripped out of his body and so he dies on—"

While he spoke Sherlock had watched John's reflection in cafe glass and only when that reflection went wide-eyed with dismay did Sherlock realise what John's expression had been _before._

Rapt. Fascinated. And something wonderful: Before Sherlock had intruded with grim reality, John Watson had been randy as hell.

Sherlock cleared his throat. He looked back at John. And _that's_ when he did the first best thing he ever did, according to the John two years hence. Sherlock leaned over the small table and whispered so softly John had to come close, close enough to feel warm-as-summer breath against his skin. "Then again, I suppose mating for hours and hours…with…with one single drone…I suppose that's a lot more romantic." Then Sherlock smiled.

They laughed then. Oh they laughed themselves absolutely giddy.

_It feels so good to get back to writing these! And speaking of writing I too am giddy—with news![Please go see and 'like'](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=470742856426571&id=411502179017306) and thank you for this because you helped it happen with your wonderful words. Thank you, thank you, thank you. P.S. These aren't Tom Fords [but gorgeous anyway](http://sherlock-in-heels.tumblr.com/post/120027173243/i-love-i-love-uh-sherlock-loves-sherlock-loves)._


	42. Outside the Box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes would not define himself as gay. Or straight. Or asexual, bisexual, or any mixture, animal, vegetable, mineral. 
> 
> Sherlock is a Schrödinger's box of sexuality, neither opened nor closed, in a state of forever being anything, everything, or nothing.
> 
> Except...

Sherlock Holmes would not define himself as gay.

He would not define himself as straight.

_He would not define himself._

He came to this conclusion when he visited a urologist recently, a visit necessary after a case Lestrade had promised was "intriguing!"

It may have been intriguing to Greg Lestrade, but it was raw sewage to Sherlock. Literally raw sewage, in a tunnel beneath Charing Cross, and through which Sherlock waded hip-deep for a quarter mile. While he got the garrotter at the end, Sherlock also got a spectacular urinary tract infection because, well, _raw_ _sewage._

Be that as it may, when you go to a doctor whose treatments focus on organs of a sexual nature, such physicians need to know the range of things you may do with those organs. So there were checkboxes, so many checkboxes on so many forms, including those that said gay, straight, and bisexual. While everyone currently living knows there are more sexual orientations than that, what was _not_ on the form was a box which said _other._

Sitting in that waiting room, tongue shoved out the side of his mouth, Sherlock wrote that in by hand so carefully it appeared typed. And then he checked the box.

Because Sherlock Holmes will not define himself as gay. Or straight. Or asexual, bisexual, or any mixture, animal, vegetable, mineral. He…he's a Schrödinger's box of sexuality, neither opened nor closed, in a state of forever being anything, everything, or nothing and, and, and _enough_ with the analogies because that isn't the point.

The point is gay bikers. Or straight bikers. Or actually one biker that could also be anything, everything, or nothing, there were no checkboxes for what the man seems to be, except jaw-dropping.

Not that Sherlock would say that to the man himself, because Sherlock is in this biker bar as a preliminary for a case, one that'll be far more 'intriguing' than Lestrade's sewer strangler. That this case has required the purchase of shiny latex trousers and seven inch heels is beside the point, and _that_ isn't the point either.

The point is that the biker, the short-haired man with the big boots, the white vest, the black leather waistcoat and tight trousers, is…he is…Sherlock keeps staring at him because he doesn't know what the man is, except distracting.

Here's the thing: Sherlock may not like to be boxed but he is exceptionally fond of boxing. So he does. Now, the man's tendency to laugh at anything his snooker partner says, and she says many hilarious things apparently, implies the man is straight.

_However._

The lop-sided grin he returns to each bar patron who buys him a drink, his casual acceptance when a few of the men touch his hip or back? Well these say he's gay. The combination hints toward an easy bisexuality, and it isn't until Sherlock's mind veers friskily toward the word _easy_ that he shakes his head and growls because _that isn't the point either._

The point, the whole point, the sharp pokey point of the point is that Sherlock is three seconds from either telling the man to go away so that he can _think,_ or leaving the bar himself when the man does something and changes everything.

The man acts like Sherlock.

Which means that the short-haired biker ( _are_ there short-haired bikers? is that even allowed?) sits himself down—after his snooker partner wins ten pounds from him—drinks one of the three drinks leather-clad, long-haired men have bought him, and he stares at Sherlock.

Sort of.

What he actually does is study him, as if Sherlock can't see him doing it. He looks at Sherlock's slicked-back hair, his tight black button-down shirt and shiny trousers. When Sherlock turns sideways, as if that will somehow make him invisible, the man's gaze drops to the ripe curve of Sherlock's arse and then, grinning close-lipped, the man looks away.

Sherlock wants him to look back.

The man does.

Sort of.

Chin to chest, still smiling, the man sips his drink and gazes up at Sherlock. That's when Sherlock decides to gather evidence.

Sauntering over, sitting by the man, matching his smile precisely, he gestures vaguely to himself. "Gay or straight?

"Gay."

Sherlock loses his smile. He was prepared for shy mumbling or the squint of a humourously-judging eye. That he got an absolutely certain answer is frankly—

"—insulting." The short-haired biker is standing up and looking down. "So why don't you just take your bad attitude, mister, and go fuc—"

"What? No. _What?"_

The man—his name is Watson, John Watson—shuts up. Uncrosses belligerently-crossed arms. "What?"

Two men ordinarily quite uppity in their own self-regard stand there like awkward idiots. The less idiotic apologises first.

"I said I was gay and you made _such_ a face—"

"What? No. Clearly you're bisexual, I was asking if you thought _I_ was—"

"Look at you. Obviously _you're_ gay—"

"What do you mean 'a face,' I—"

"How could you possibly know I'm bi—"

 _"Obviously_ gay? _I_ don't even know if I'm—"

"What?"

"Wait."

Both men shut up. Both wait because, though they may indeed be idiots, they are idiots who are aware that they find the other quite a little bit of all right.

They wait a bit more. Then they both have the same genius idea at the same time.

They reach to shake hands. John Watson sticks out his left because he's a lefty. Sherlock pokes out his right. Their limbs clash. For a moment they're holding hands.

They let go, giggling awkwardly. John says, "Sorry. I forgot. This is a lefty club." He does a little finger-twirl gesture, taking in the other bikers.

Sherlock says what he's thinking, like he always does. "You belong to a gay, left-handed biker group?"

"LGBT."

"What?"

"It's an LGBT group."

"Ah."

They stand about awkwardly a bit more.

"And snooker."

Sherlock frowns. John explains. "It's an LGBT lefty bikers who play snooker group."

Sherlock nods. John licks his lips. Sherlock watches his tongue.

"Who are doctors."

Sherlock nods again, as if now everything makes sense. With the heady musk of pheromones in the air, actually it feels like everything does.

"That's…great," Sherlock says because he can't think of anything else to say, which is good because it gives John something to say. "So you, uh, you want a ride on my bike then?"

Sherlock's lost count of exactly how many wrong feet he and this unreasonably sexy stranger have got off on, so he clears his throat until his voice drops at least an octave. "Are you talking about…a…a motorbike or…”

Sherlock makes a little finger-twirly gesture toward John’s lower region. “Or… uh…your…”

And right there and right then two idiots start falling in love, because Sherlock Holmes looks at John Watson, lefty bisexual doctor biker who plays snooker, and he starts giggling like the hormone-addled mad. For the first time though not the last John Watson follows his lead.

Once they recover, breathless and pink-cheeked, John says, "Well we can start with the one and see about the other?"

Sherlock grins. Then realises he better check which one they're starting with because—

"My _motorbike,"_ says John Watson. "We'll start with the motorbike."

Sherlock says something witty—neither later remember what—and finishes up with, "Captain Watson."

The good doctor can not just let that go, so he asks Sherlock how he knew he was in the army. Sherlock explains and in the explaining deduces eight other things and ends up explaining these over a pint, then another.

They never do make it out to John's motorbike that night, but Sherlock _does_ get a long ride several weeks later.

Not on the bike though.

_Thank you Merissea211 for inspiring me to finally finish this. If folks like these forty-two stories of other ways the boys might have met…[here are sixty-nine more](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/138889209609/wait-what-could-these-be-my-two-books-of-other). P.S. I promise I'll write more of these though the series is marked done!_


	43. …this fucking pilgrimage toward decrepitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock squinted at his own reflection in one of the big, shiny shop mirrors. Despite being barely two feet from the glass, he couldn't actually make out his own face all that well, so he raised his eyebrows the better to see.
> 
> Oh. _Oooh._
> 
> No wonder villains and baristas weren't afraid of him any more.

_Mayfair Optics, London—1999_

"Do not even ask me about my knees."

With a grunt John Watson went to his knees.

"I could talk your ear off about what's suddenly going on with my decrepit knees, but I won't because you look very nice."

Sherlock Holmes stopped spinning the little eyeglass carousel. He checked behind him, but the optometrist and her staff were somewhere not here. It was eight on a winter night and the only two people in the brightly-lighted optometry shop were Sherlock Holmes and this suddenly-talkative stranger.

It did not take a deductive genius, therefore, to understand that the man on his knees—which Sherlock was not to ask about—thought it was Sherlock who looked very nice.

Sherlock scowled.

That had been happening a lot lately. The 'nice' thing. People looking at him, Sherlock Holmes, and thinking _well he looks nice._ Just this morning a detective at Scotland Yard had smiled at him. Even after he'd accidentally caused her to drop a three-hundred page case file, then 'helped' by pushing a couple papers closer to with his foot. She'd just tut-tutted, said he was _such a nice boy_ and told him to run along.

At Bart's later this afternoon he'd spilt a test tube of blood and it had flowed across the bench like some sort of very small red sea. The student two seats over had watched Sherlock mop up the mess very messily, positively beaming as the smear smeared.

And now this stranger, on bad knees of which they must not speak, squinting far-sightedly at him and grinning a mouthful of nice teeth.

Sherlock leaned sideways, squinted at his own reflection in one of the big, shiny shop mirrors. Despite being barely two feet from the glass, he couldn't actually make out his own face all that well, what with the need for glasses, so he raised his eyebrows the better to see. His eyes went wide and— _oh!_ There it was. A suddenly-open, friendly expression that did indeed make him look quite amenable.

No wonder villains and baristas weren't afraid of him any more.

Sherlock stepped close to the shiny, shiny mirror in the very white optometry show room and he scowled. Ha! And there it was, the expression that made the violent voluble and the tremulous talkative. Would the scowl still work if he wore glasses?

Sherlock reached, grabbed the first frames his fingers fell on, donned them. He barked a startled breath and stepped back. Dear god he looked like his year one teacher. He looked exactly like Mrs. Kleoette.

Lord he'd been so desperately in love with her. She had been kind. He had been five.

Sherlock took the frames off, let them clatter to a tiny table behind him, stepped away from them as if they'd put their hand on his bottom. He was in such trouble.

"Why?"

Sherlock turned to the knee man. "What?"

"You said 'oh dear god no this will never work I absolutely can not wear glasses so help me.' I'm just asking why."

Sherlock didn't realize he'd spoken. Apparently at length. Which was now par for the course it seemed, because he also hadn't realized until three minutes ago that he blinks wide-eyed when he can't see well. This stranger's body might be going toward decrepitude but Sherlock's was clearly on a trip to self-rule. This was made even more obvious by the fact that, though he wished to right this minute say something rude in reply to the stranger with the nice teeth and the big blue eyes, Sherlock said nothing.

So the stranger did.

"My mum wore glasses when I was a kid, got contact lenses later, but until she did I always went with her to pick out new frames. She called these sorts of places—" John gestured to the one thousand frames around them, "Imagination rooms. Isn't that wonderful? Maybe you can just think of it that way. Each pair of eyeglass frames is like a new disguise."

Sherlock would later reflect that there was absolutely no way John could have known how many times he'd donned false noses, capes, wigs, and arse-hugging mini-skirts, so there was no reason at all to use the word _disguise._ Use it John had, however, and that's probably when everything began changing, because it was then Sherlock started to see what he was seeing.

The stranger shuffled round a bit on his knees, sat back on his haunches and Sherlock saw that the man with the nice teeth and big blue eyes, he also had at least four sorts of blond in his hair.

"Think about it. You could buy all kinds of frames for all kinds of occasions, couldn't you? I always used to tell myself that if I ever needed glasses I'd buy a half dozen pair and change them depending on my mood." The stranger cocked his head and a bit of fringe fell into his bright blue eyes. Five. Sherlock counted five sorts of blond. "'Course I was ten-years-old then and didn't know that some fucking frames cost as much as a Knightsbridge flat but there you go."

Sherlock felt a small thrill in his nethers. He actually thought those words. _Nethers. Thrill._ There was something about the man's sass and decrepit knees and that too-long fringe that had Sherlock staring at him myopically.

The man stared back.

"See here's the thing. I got on my knees yesterday. Where they're putting up that big ugly Ferris wheel by the river, you know? Anyway, I wanted to pet this tiny dog, Sir Aloysius Dandelion Floof or something painfully adorable like that. You should have seen this dog. Not even two kilos but the gravitational pull of a planet. I made infantile sounds at that dog. I may have cooed."

John Watson batted at the air, as if at vexing dandelion fluff. "What I'm trying to say is I got on my knees on pavement to pet him and then I couldn't get up. Well clearly I could because I'm here and not still there, but my knees is what I'm trying to say. My knees had done something and I don't even know what, I just know that I needed to put my hands on pavement with spilled cola and nasty gum and push my way up, arse in the air like a toddler, and what I'm trying to say in the most painfully round-about-fashion possible is welcome to getting older, a boon not given to as many humans as might want it and so aren't we lucky?" The stranger with the lovely hair and the blue eyes and the nice shoulders didn't wait for a reply, just went ahead and said brusquely, "We are lucky, trust me, I know. And here's the other thing I know: We can complain or we can kick arse, those are our choices."

The man gestured to one thousand styles of eyeglass frames, nodding his head briskly. An ordinary person just then would have looked at that man, then looked around them, wondering: _Who the hell_ are _you?_

Sherlock Holmes did not do that.

He did something else entirely, as if it explained everything. "My name is Sherlock Holmes. I'm a consulting detective. I solve murders."

The stranger placed his palms flat on pristine floor tiles and his attractive rump in the air. "I'm—shit, my knees are so fucked—John Watson." John of the fucked knees grunted himself vertical. "Sorry, that last bit's my name, not the rest. The rest is just me being on some sort of fucking pilgrimage to decrepitude. I solve, uh, I guess I solve diarrhea and lingering coughs. I'm a doctor and I'm generally more cheerful than my swearing might imply." John Watson held out a hand. "What sort of murders?"

They shook. "The kind that mystify Scotland Yard. I stick an oar in when they're going round in circles. I'm doubting the veracity of 'more cheerful.' Your frown lines are deeper than your smile lines."

John shrugged. "Well tiny floofy dogs make me cheerful, so there's that."

They smiled at each other then. And right after they did that, they did something else. They stared. Into each other's eyes. Except it didn't feel like staring now, it felt like diving deep, no need for air.

"Your hair," said John, looking up into pretty sloe eyes, his heart going skittery-thump, "is kind of floofy."

"There is," said Sherlock looking down, skin all prickly and hot, "six sorts of blond in your fringe."

They both glanced away then, suddenly shy. John looked at all the eyeglass frames. He thought about disguises. Sherlock looked at the white Perspex walls. He thought how easily blood would clean from them.

Then John frowned. "Where the hell did everyone go?"

"Home."

"Why on earth would they do that?"

"It's all right, I have the key."

John shrugged again. "So. Something to do with sticking your oar in?"

"Yes."

John nodded, fingered a pair of ugly black spectacles. "I could help," he said. "With the eyeglass frames. If you want."

Sherlock's eyes did that thing again, the opening wide thing. People didn't usually offer to help him. So yes, he wanted that. Very much so.

He didn't know how to _say_ that though.

Sherlock knew how to say lots of other things. Things like "—and obviously the ladder in the man's stockings spoke of _murder,"_ and how to say "—you'll need much more than that to prove I'm an insensitive arsehole detective inspector," but Sherlock did not know how to say _you smell like buttery bread or sea brine or breath or something nice with a B and it's giving me a bit of an erection,_ so Sherlock just…leaned forward.

It was now John's eyes doing the opening wide thing and the rest of him doing nothing. Then he cleared his throat, reached out randomly, and plucked up a pair of frames. They were brown. Faux grained. The little tag called them "Morning Wood." John put them on Sherlock. Sherlock looked very, very good in them. John had thoughts about Sherlock's morning wood. John also began plumping in his pants.

After that came six red frames, twelve blue, and four purple. There were then yellow, green, and beige. There was a white pair that made Sherlock pale as a milk bottle, and ovals that made him look like a consumptive poet. There were cat-eye frames, flower shapes, circles, and squares. There were frames of metal and plastic, velvet and of actual wood. There were three pairs with gears and magnifiers, ruby lenses and leather, and over these they spent forty minutes, heads together, figuring out what all the little bits could do. Sherlock's tongue stuck out the side of his mouth. John watched it lick and poke.

They stayed in that over-bright shop all night. It was their first date. If you count the cat nap it was also their second.

It ended with their first kiss, their second kiss, and a good old-fashioned feel-up as Sherlock rubbed John's decrepit knees, which had refused to unlock after John had crawled under a table in search of a tiny eyeglass screw.

"I read something once," John murmured a bit later, shifting again until Sherlock's massaging hands were well north of his knee. "It said to fall in love with a person's eyes. Because eyes never age, so if you fall in love with someone's eyes, you'll be in love forever."

There were at least three scientific fallacies in that, but Sherlock didn't point out even one. Instead he leaned forward again. John met him halfway and they had their third kiss. Then their fourth.

And there, among a thousand disguises, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes began falling in love. They'd spend the rest of their forever there, decrepitude be damned.

_Starting with this chapter I'll include subheads as to the story's where and, more importantly, when. This is because in[The Night They Met](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/136276512769/in-the-night-they-met-are-stories-of-gay) I set stories across every decade of the last 130 years and very much enjoyed that challenge. This may mean stories will be longer, too. I'm sorry you're welcome. P.S. This is Sherlock's [wide-eyed face](http://atlinmerrick.tumblr.com/post/159825703019/fic-this-fucking-pilgrimage-toward-decrepitude). P.P.S. I co-produce a [writing newsletter now](http://us14.campaign-archive2.com/?u=0b3c41ccca3b1f531445341f9&id=3e425ac0ce) if you're interested, [want to take part](http://us14.campaign-archive2.com/?u=0b3c41ccca3b1f531445341f9&id=ff4b914d97&e=8ca76d5188) or wish to [subscribe](http://improbablepress.us14.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=0b3c41ccca3b1f531445341f9&id=bc72abb100). And, finally, though this is marked complete I'll continue added stand-alone chapters as I can._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Head Over Heels](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062160) by [WatsonsWarrioress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatsonsWarrioress/pseuds/WatsonsWarrioress)
  * [Milking It For All It's Worth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2079810) by [OldPingHai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldPingHai/pseuds/OldPingHai)
  * [The Johnlock Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3212018) by [cwb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cwb/pseuds/cwb)
  * [Cover -- Well Met](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4181301) by [thewaysinwhich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewaysinwhich/pseuds/thewaysinwhich)




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